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His final conclusion is that C has to go, just like COBOL, Fortran, and PL/I. I wonder how long it will take before C will be gone totally when you realize how

His final conclusion is that C has to go, just like COBOL, Fortran, and PL/I. I wonder how long it will take before C will be gone totally when you realize how much COBOL and Fortran are still around. Not so long ago, I came along a module for Python 'SciPy.interpolate' that happens to be programmed in Fortran.

jvanderbot 4y ago
There are certainly some key libraries that use Fortran still. But I wouldn't say it's still "around". As a language for new projects, it's extremely niche. That's probably what "go" means in your comment. I assume you're being facetious with the "recently came across", since scipy is so common, but I will add that nearly every math-intense library is a clever wrapper for some Fortran code. I would be perfectly happy to see many hardened C libraries become the foundation of the next gen systems/ embedded languages. It does bother me slightly when we abandon the past entirely and attempt to "rewrite it in X"
- jacquesm 4y ago
  In part that is because once a piece of software has been part of a certification process it can be very hard to replace it by something newer, no matter how shiny or how much faster. You can see quite a bit of this in aerospace, civil engineering and so on. Nobody wants to be the one to replace the Fortran based FEA package with something novel and end up being liable for a bug.
- fjfaase 4y ago
  No, I was not being facetious. I am not a regular user of Python, mostly have been writing/maintaining software in C++ and (in the past three years) C#. I came across it because a colleague (fluent in Python) had used scipy.interpolate in some experimentation and now the algorithm he came up with has to be implemented in C#, so I investigated whether scipy.interpolate could be called from C# and then found out that its source was in Fortran. But just like Fortran is still used for nearly every math-intense library, mostly invisible for most of the users, I suspect that C will still be around in 50 years from now. I agree, with his observation that C should be no longer your language of choice for new projects. I personally still prefer using C/C++ for my private software projects, simply because it is the language I am most fluent in. This year I used it for AoC.
  - auxym 4y ago
    Significant chunks of numpy and scipy, the "main" python packages for numerical algorithms, are wrappers around classic libraries such as BLAS, LAPACK and ARPACK, which are Fortran. Fortran was the de-facto language of scientific and numerical programming for a long time, back to the 60s even. These libraries are battle tested more than anything else out there, they literally have decades behind them, so they are industry standard and are used wherever possible.
Decabytes 4y ago
I think it will go when we have a sufficiently popular and useful systems programming language that will replace it. It has to be a language that isn't just C with some extra bits, which is why SafeC and CheckedC aren't more popular. I actually think the closest language will be Zig. It's a much simpler language than Rust and people who like C really value that simplicity. It also removes a lot of Cs baggage that make it annoying to program in. But since Zig 1.0 is unlikely until 2026 I'd say we wouldn't start seeing Zig majorly displace any C programs until about ten years after 1.0, which would be 2036. Rust 1.0 was in 2015 and we are just starting to see it in the Linux kernel ~ 8 years out, so that seems like a good timeline. Then just give it another 40 years and I could see a future where Zig and Rust replace all code where C is currently used. Sure there might be some ancient legacy systems that use C, but just like COBOL, would not be something that you would come across unless you wanted to.
- keewee7 4y ago
  Is there a reason Zig is taking so long to go 1.0? The language itself feels mature.
  - ptato 4y ago
    the self-hosted rewrite took a long time so it felt like the project had stalled for the past ~year. the team has started working on new features like the package manager, though.
- addaon 4y ago
  Is there any other systems language that's even moving towards a mature ecosystem with a compiler like CompCert? It feels like this is still decades away for any realistic competitor to C.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  SafeC and CheckedC do nothing for temporal safety. Zig is in the same boat. There's not really a simpler alternative to Rust with the same featureset, even its direct predecessor Cyclone was in fact quite a bit harder to use. Rust itself is also improving very quickly and becoming easier to use over time.
AstixAndBelix 4y ago
We can replace COBOL with a Java backend to keep the enterprise feeling going, but what would C's replacement be in this case?
- pjmlp 4y ago
  C++ for starters, would already be an improvment, provided string, array and vector classes with bounds checking, get used instead of raw C pointers. Alongside RAII for resource management.
  - youarethejoke 4y ago
    For most embedded stuff those are just extra hassle and not worth it. C and its raw pointers and are really all you need most of the time. The need to have some discipline and expertise to produce solid code with confidence is not a bad thing in the embedded domain. If the code truly is critical you need to dive deep into verification techniques anyway.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Sure we all know that the S in IoT stands for security.
    - timbit42 4y ago
      Rust has already begun to replace C in the embedded space.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Rust is already replacing C and C++. Ada is too. As the importance of safety increases, more safe languages will appear that can replace C and C++.
Sakos 4y ago
Is that even possible as long as the Linux kernel is written in C? I wonder if telling people not to learn C will have a long-term effect on being able to find competent contributors to the kernel.
- nousermane 4y ago
  > Linux kernel is written in C Not exclusively in C, not anymore: https://docs.kernel.org/rust/index.html https://docs.kernel.org/rust/index.html It might take another decade for a C-free build to be possible, though.
  - c7DJTLrn 4y ago
    Only a decade? I don't think so. AFAIK Torvalds has also stipulated that any Rust code needs to be mirrored in C.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - michaelsshaw 4y ago
      This right here. Rust only JUST got added to the kernel in 6.0 and I doubt that it will replace 30 years of C development any time soon.
    - mustache_kimono 4y ago
      > AFAIK Torvalds has also stipulated that any Rust code needs to be mirrored in C. Do you have a cite for this? I hadn't heard this at all.
      - c7DJTLrn 4y ago
        Apologies, I can't find a source. I probably read it on LWN somewhere. Linus wouldn't dip both feet into the water at the same time. I'm confident he's said that the kernel needs to be buildable without Rust if need be.
sylware 4y ago
C syntax is already way too rich and complex, not to mention the bazillions of gcc extensions required to compile the linux kernel. Namely, if it has to be "replaced", that would be with something with a much simpler syntax, which will require a bit more of finger power. We don't want to find ourself locked-in by very few compiler vendors (open source or not), that only because it is not reasonable to code a real-life alternative with a small team of averagely skilled devs in a reasonable amount of time. This language should build on C though: no enum/typedef/_generic/switch/etc, only 1 loop keyword (loop{}) only explicit sized types, no integer promotion, no implicit casts (except maybe void* pointers but number literal casts should be) but explicit casts (compile-time and runtime, without that horrible c++ syntax), explicit compile-time const (we have only runtime consts which could be optimized as compile-time consts), enforce extern for functions (and don't try to put the binary format, elf/coff/etc, semantics into the language syntax or worse, the OS interface semantics), etc. With enough discipline (and compiler warnings), we could get close to such language. I did not check the latest and greatest rust syntax, but is what's above its explicit goals? That said, I am a "everything in 64bits RISC-V assembly with x86_64/arm64 legacy ports kind of guy"... if RISC-V is successful (I wish). We could think of high-level language interpreters (coded in assembly, for instance a RISC-V coded python/lua/javascript/etc interpreters).
- tristanbvk 4y ago
  These are good ideas. The simplicity here is what I am going for.
  - sylware 4y ago
    On the long run, it all depends on syntax stability which is tightly coupled with its complexity. The "benchmark" to run to evaluate syntax complexity toxicity, for a compiled language, is how long an alternative compiler written by a small teams of averagely skilled devs, or even one individual averagely skilled dev, can stay a "real life" "working" alternative. Mid-term/long-term planned obsolescence of computer language syntax is really... Oh, and in my previous post: for compile time constants we can use static consts, my bad.
- 4y ago
pjmlp 4y ago
It won't go away, but just like it happens with COBOL, Fortran, and PL/I, you won't see anyone dreaming of coding C until the end of their working days. Or maybe they will, given how much consultants in those languages happen to be paid, as no one else wants to touch them.
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  But coding C is actually fun!
  - Ygg2 4y ago
    Sure. But debugging sure isn't. Null, null terminated strings, data races, segfaults...
    - Koshkin 4y ago
      No, no - debugging is actually where all the fun is!
      - Ygg2 4y ago
        I'm not masochistic enough, I guess.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  > you won't see anyone dreaming of coding C until the end of their working days. I do dream about that. Just being able to tag along while some programmers learn their Xth framework as a language. Maybe someday I might concede and move on from C89 to C99.
  - diydsp 4y ago
    Same here. Ive got so much experience and libraries ive written i can marshall. They've been ported across small and large platforms since before github and google. Ive been maintaining them since the 5.25" disk age. New C projects aren't precarious to me. Watching a bunch of architects with no embedded experience try to make C++ happen on microcontrollers in the other hand...
flohofwoe 4y ago
A good bet is that a technology will be around at least as long as it has been around (I think there's also a 'named law' for it). So I fully expect C to be around in one way or another for the next 50 years, it probably won't be as important anymore, just as COBOL or Fortran are not as important as they used to be. One reason for C to disappear completely would be if computer architectures would change so much that current programming languages no longer even map to those new architectures (e.g. all the existing programming languages would need to be dumped anyway).
- ReactiveJelly 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect > The Lindy effect (also known as Lindy's Law[1]) is a theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age. Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy.
  - timbit42 4y ago
    While C and C++ have been around longer than COBOL was when building new systems it it was halted, at least COBOL does its job well while C and C++ don't due to their lack of safety. Also, COBOL is more difficult to replace than C and C++ are. I expect C and C++ code to start being seen as dangerous and money will be spent to eradicate it due to its potential to be a security risk in this online world.
hgs3 4y ago
C is the best abstraction for many problem domains and that isn't going to change. I understand why folks coming from higher-level languages would dislike it, but for anyone coming from assembly it's a godsend. The speaker discourages C for new projects, but that says more about the problem domains they work in than C itself. C is what it is because the hardware and assembly language are what they are. Folks who want a safer C should design a new hardware architecture with a "safe" assembly language and a new low-level language that targets it.
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  Anyone discouraging a particular tool without actual context of the problem being solved gets zero respect from me. It's a massive red flag that they don't know enough to be useful. C is great for the things C is great for, however small that range may or may not be now and in the future. Any other stance is reductive and misleading.
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    Exactly what, in the year 2023 C.E., is C great for? I’ve been writing C since 1991 and I can’t think of anything where I wouldn’t start a new project in some other language. There are many interesting choices of varying maturity in the low-level systems programming space: Zig, Rust, Crystal, D, Swift (if the standard library ever gains support for system-level programming). Even the “better C” subset of C++ will allow you to avoid certain classes of security bugs completely. I don’t think C is even merely adequate for anything at this point; defaulting to memory safety is table stakes in any domain where C was once dominant.
    - Koshkin 4y ago
      > C.E. There.
    - fncslothouber 4y ago
      Memory safety / security is important for a subset of all possible applications. It is not important for _all_ applications. If I use a micro controller to control a string of leds I do not care about security/memory safety. But I do care about being as close to the metal as possible, and being able to understand the compiled code.
kovac 4y ago
Can C really completely go away as long as there's embedded programming? Are there any other alternatives for that domain?
- Tomte 4y ago
  There are embedded devices programmed in other languages, you know, and there have been for decades. In Ada, for example. Which is an even better fit to the domain than C (better ways to describe hardware idiosyncracies).
- Zagitta 4y ago
  Rust is rapidly picking up steam in the embedded sphere :-) Unfortunately it's an industry with a lot of stubborn old people so I don't see any major changes happening until they've retired but I'm willing to bet that async is going to revolutionize embedded development. Being able to await interrupts and doing efficient cooperative scheduling while writing straight forward code is a massive QoL improvement which is what embassy is enabling: https://embassy.dev/ https://embassy.dev/
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Yes, compilers for C++, BASIC, Pascal, Ada are around, mostly commercial and people pay to keep those companies in business, for powerfull microcontrollers where real time GC is an option, there are Oberon, .NET and Java as well. There are surelly other factors that weight in using C, but not for lack of options (in many cases).
- KnowOneYouNo 4y ago
  Ada is a much better and modern alternative for embedded, real-time and/or systems programming. Its mature, (although still evolving) and very scalable from very, very small to very, very large systems. It also supports interoperability with C and C++. It is a primary language in GCC. See https://ada-lang.io/ https://ada-lang.io/ and https://learn.adacore.com/ https://learn.adacore.com/ Unfortunately Ada is held back by a genuine lack of awareness and some old misinformation baggage.
  - 4y ago
jillesvangurp 4y ago
In a way, it's already happening. Many big tech companies are now defaulting to other languages than C and are actively discouraging the use of C or C++ for new code. They still have a big vested interest in maintaining existing code of course. That's not going to disappear overnight obviously.
- pillefitz 4y ago
  Do you have examples? Is it all going towards Rust or are there other big tech-backed contenders?
  - timbit42 4y ago
    I read recently that parts of the code for Artemis are written in Ada. Ada is also used on the ISS. Makes me wonder who besides NASA might be using Ada due to its' safety.
jcranmer 4y ago
My prediction is that C will die off as a language long before Fortran and COBOL. What keeps a language like Fortran alive is that it is used in an application niche where rewriting is done at best ship-of-Theseus style, and the friction of using a new language for a component far outweighs the benefits of doing so (weather models are a good example here). For COBOL, it remains in applications where the cost of a switch or rewrite includes a low risk of catastrophic, and therefore expensive, failure (see Southwest Airlines for a very public and recent example of such a failure). C does have a similar kind of niche at first glance: systems programming is of course conservative, rewriting everything is unlikely, and of course, C is the language used for ABI. Except on closer inspection, that moat is remarkably shallow. Being the language of ABI means that every competitor language has some way to speak C guaranteed, so the friction of rewriting systems software Ship-of-Theseus-style is much lower (though still nonzero). Systems software is rewritten from scratch on a much higher cadence: in the last 20 years or so, most of the userspace system glue for Linux has been replaced (e.g., systemd, iproute2, pulseaudio, wayland). And we've learned over the past few decades that there's no practical way to fix C's fundamental unsafety issues with software engineering practices, and C's committee is too conservative to consider retrofitting the necessary features to be able to fix unsafety at a language level (to say nothing of getting people to use it). There is already a small clutch of languages that can serve C's niches that don't have the same fundamental unsafety issues, and right now, we're sort of at an experimental stage of system software trying them out. It's not unreasonable to believe that within a decade or so, one or more of these languages would be considered a standard, safe choice for implementing new systems software--and the use of C in new projects will start dropping. At some point, the proliferation of non-C systems projects will make people point out that having these components talk through C's ABI is too limited in functionality, and a system will change its ABI from C to some other language. And once it is no longer the language of ABI, C will lack its moat that keeps it alive, and it will start dying, though its death will be a slow, agonizing death.
Wadajot 4y ago
> that happens to be programmed in Fortran. SciPy is a highly optimized library and Fortran is faster than C for some tasks: https://stackoverflow.com/a/146186/3383640 https://stackoverflow.com/a/146186/3383640
Tozen 4y ago
The problem is that there isn't anything to replace C, that would be acceptable enough. C has become a quasi protocol, and used in exchanges between languages. One could argue it's better for newer languages to embrace and excel in interop with C, while providing more advantages, being safer in comparison, or greater ease of use. As is arguably the case with Vlang, Dlang, Nim, etc... If anything, C may still be going strong for another 20 to 30 years.

jvanderbot 4y ago

There are certainly some key libraries that use Fortran still. But I wouldn't say it's still "around". As a language for new projects, it's extremely niche. That's probably what "go" means in your comment. I assume you're being facetious with the "recently came across", since scipy is so common, but I will add that nearly every math-intense library is a clever wrapper for some Fortran code. I would be perfectly happy to see many hardened C libraries become the foundation of the next gen systems/ embedded languages. It does bother me slightly when we abandon the past entirely and attempt to "rewrite it in X"

jacquesm 4y ago
In part that is because once a piece of software has been part of a certification process it can be very hard to replace it by something newer, no matter how shiny or how much faster. You can see quite a bit of this in aerospace, civil engineering and so on. Nobody wants to be the one to replace the Fortran based FEA package with something novel and end up being liable for a bug.
fjfaase 4y ago
No, I was not being facetious. I am not a regular user of Python, mostly have been writing/maintaining software in C++ and (in the past three years) C#. I came across it because a colleague (fluent in Python) had used scipy.interpolate in some experimentation and now the algorithm he came up with has to be implemented in C#, so I investigated whether scipy.interpolate could be called from C# and then found out that its source was in Fortran. But just like Fortran is still used for nearly every math-intense library, mostly invisible for most of the users, I suspect that C will still be around in 50 years from now. I agree, with his observation that C should be no longer your language of choice for new projects. I personally still prefer using C/C++ for my private software projects, simply because it is the language I am most fluent in. This year I used it for AoC.
- auxym 4y ago
  Significant chunks of numpy and scipy, the "main" python packages for numerical algorithms, are wrappers around classic libraries such as BLAS, LAPACK and ARPACK, which are Fortran. Fortran was the de-facto language of scientific and numerical programming for a long time, back to the 60s even. These libraries are battle tested more than anything else out there, they literally have decades behind them, so they are industry standard and are used wherever possible.

Decabytes 4y ago

I think it will go when we have a sufficiently popular and useful systems programming language that will replace it. It has to be a language that isn't just C with some extra bits, which is why SafeC and CheckedC aren't more popular. I actually think the closest language will be Zig. It's a much simpler language than Rust and people who like C really value that simplicity. It also removes a lot of Cs baggage that make it annoying to program in. But since Zig 1.0 is unlikely until 2026 I'd say we wouldn't start seeing Zig majorly displace any C programs until about ten years after 1.0, which would be 2036. Rust 1.0 was in 2015 and we are just starting to see it in the Linux kernel ~ 8 years out, so that seems like a good timeline. Then just give it another 40 years and I could see a future where Zig and Rust replace all code where C is currently used. Sure there might be some ancient legacy systems that use C, but just like COBOL, would not be something that you would come across unless you wanted to.

keewee7 4y ago
Is there a reason Zig is taking so long to go 1.0? The language itself feels mature.
- ptato 4y ago
  the self-hosted rewrite took a long time so it felt like the project had stalled for the past ~year. the team has started working on new features like the package manager, though.
addaon 4y ago
Is there any other systems language that's even moving towards a mature ecosystem with a compiler like CompCert? It feels like this is still decades away for any realistic competitor to C.
zozbot234 4y ago
SafeC and CheckedC do nothing for temporal safety. Zig is in the same boat. There's not really a simpler alternative to Rust with the same featureset, even its direct predecessor Cyclone was in fact quite a bit harder to use. Rust itself is also improving very quickly and becoming easier to use over time.

AstixAndBelix 4y ago

We can replace COBOL with a Java backend to keep the enterprise feeling going, but what would C's replacement be in this case?

pjmlp 4y ago
C++ for starters, would already be an improvment, provided string, array and vector classes with bounds checking, get used instead of raw C pointers. Alongside RAII for resource management.
- youarethejoke 4y ago
  For most embedded stuff those are just extra hassle and not worth it. C and its raw pointers and are really all you need most of the time. The need to have some discipline and expertise to produce solid code with confidence is not a bad thing in the embedded domain. If the code truly is critical you need to dive deep into verification techniques anyway.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Sure we all know that the S in IoT stands for security.
  - timbit42 4y ago
    Rust has already begun to replace C in the embedded space.
timbit42 4y ago
Rust is already replacing C and C++. Ada is too. As the importance of safety increases, more safe languages will appear that can replace C and C++.

Sakos 4y ago

Is that even possible as long as the Linux kernel is written in C? I wonder if telling people not to learn C will have a long-term effect on being able to find competent contributors to the kernel.

nousermane 4y ago
> Linux kernel is written in C Not exclusively in C, not anymore: https://docs.kernel.org/rust/index.html https://docs.kernel.org/rust/index.html It might take another decade for a C-free build to be possible, though.
- c7DJTLrn 4y ago
  Only a decade? I don't think so. AFAIK Torvalds has also stipulated that any Rust code needs to be mirrored in C.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - michaelsshaw 4y ago
    This right here. Rust only JUST got added to the kernel in 6.0 and I doubt that it will replace 30 years of C development any time soon.
  - mustache_kimono 4y ago
    > AFAIK Torvalds has also stipulated that any Rust code needs to be mirrored in C. Do you have a cite for this? I hadn't heard this at all.
    - c7DJTLrn 4y ago
      Apologies, I can't find a source. I probably read it on LWN somewhere. Linus wouldn't dip both feet into the water at the same time. I'm confident he's said that the kernel needs to be buildable without Rust if need be.

sylware 4y ago

C syntax is already way too rich and complex, not to mention the bazillions of gcc extensions required to compile the linux kernel. Namely, if it has to be "replaced", that would be with something with a much simpler syntax, which will require a bit more of finger power. We don't want to find ourself locked-in by very few compiler vendors (open source or not), that only because it is not reasonable to code a real-life alternative with a small team of averagely skilled devs in a reasonable amount of time. This language should build on C though: no enum/typedef/_generic/switch/etc, only 1 loop keyword (loop{}) only explicit sized types, no integer promotion, no implicit casts (except maybe void* pointers but number literal casts should be) but explicit casts (compile-time and runtime, without that horrible c++ syntax), explicit compile-time const (we have only runtime consts which could be optimized as compile-time consts), enforce extern for functions (and don't try to put the binary format, elf/coff/etc, semantics into the language syntax or worse, the OS interface semantics), etc. With enough discipline (and compiler warnings), we could get close to such language. I did not check the latest and greatest rust syntax, but is what's above its explicit goals? That said, I am a "everything in 64bits RISC-V assembly with x86_64/arm64 legacy ports kind of guy"... if RISC-V is successful (I wish). We could think of high-level language interpreters (coded in assembly, for instance a RISC-V coded python/lua/javascript/etc interpreters).

tristanbvk 4y ago
These are good ideas. The simplicity here is what I am going for.
- sylware 4y ago
  On the long run, it all depends on syntax stability which is tightly coupled with its complexity. The "benchmark" to run to evaluate syntax complexity toxicity, for a compiled language, is how long an alternative compiler written by a small teams of averagely skilled devs, or even one individual averagely skilled dev, can stay a "real life" "working" alternative. Mid-term/long-term planned obsolescence of computer language syntax is really... Oh, and in my previous post: for compile time constants we can use static consts, my bad.
4y ago

pjmlp 4y ago

It won't go away, but just like it happens with COBOL, Fortran, and PL/I, you won't see anyone dreaming of coding C until the end of their working days. Or maybe they will, given how much consultants in those languages happen to be paid, as no one else wants to touch them.

pantalaimon 4y ago
But coding C is actually fun!
- Ygg2 4y ago
  Sure. But debugging sure isn't. Null, null terminated strings, data races, segfaults...
  - Koshkin 4y ago
    No, no - debugging is actually where all the fun is!
    - Ygg2 4y ago
      I'm not masochistic enough, I guess.
rightbyte 4y ago
> you won't see anyone dreaming of coding C until the end of their working days. I do dream about that. Just being able to tag along while some programmers learn their Xth framework as a language. Maybe someday I might concede and move on from C89 to C99.
- diydsp 4y ago
  Same here. Ive got so much experience and libraries ive written i can marshall. They've been ported across small and large platforms since before github and google. Ive been maintaining them since the 5.25" disk age. New C projects aren't precarious to me. Watching a bunch of architects with no embedded experience try to make C++ happen on microcontrollers in the other hand...

flohofwoe 4y ago

A good bet is that a technology will be around at least as long as it has been around (I think there's also a 'named law' for it). So I fully expect C to be around in one way or another for the next 50 years, it probably won't be as important anymore, just as COBOL or Fortran are not as important as they used to be. One reason for C to disappear completely would be if computer architectures would change so much that current programming languages no longer even map to those new architectures (e.g. all the existing programming languages would need to be dumped anyway).

ReactiveJelly 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect > The Lindy effect (also known as Lindy's Law[1]) is a theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age. Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy.
- timbit42 4y ago
  While C and C++ have been around longer than COBOL was when building new systems it it was halted, at least COBOL does its job well while C and C++ don't due to their lack of safety. Also, COBOL is more difficult to replace than C and C++ are. I expect C and C++ code to start being seen as dangerous and money will be spent to eradicate it due to its potential to be a security risk in this online world.

hgs3 4y ago

C is the best abstraction for many problem domains and that isn't going to change. I understand why folks coming from higher-level languages would dislike it, but for anyone coming from assembly it's a godsend. The speaker discourages C for new projects, but that says more about the problem domains they work in than C itself. C is what it is because the hardware and assembly language are what they are. Folks who want a safer C should design a new hardware architecture with a "safe" assembly language and a new low-level language that targets it.

sirsinsalot 4y ago
Anyone discouraging a particular tool without actual context of the problem being solved gets zero respect from me. It's a massive red flag that they don't know enough to be useful. C is great for the things C is great for, however small that range may or may not be now and in the future. Any other stance is reductive and misleading.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  Exactly what, in the year 2023 C.E., is C great for? I’ve been writing C since 1991 and I can’t think of anything where I wouldn’t start a new project in some other language. There are many interesting choices of varying maturity in the low-level systems programming space: Zig, Rust, Crystal, D, Swift (if the standard library ever gains support for system-level programming). Even the “better C” subset of C++ will allow you to avoid certain classes of security bugs completely. I don’t think C is even merely adequate for anything at this point; defaulting to memory safety is table stakes in any domain where C was once dominant.
  - Koshkin 4y ago
    > C.E. There.
  - fncslothouber 4y ago
    Memory safety / security is important for a subset of all possible applications. It is not important for _all_ applications. If I use a micro controller to control a string of leds I do not care about security/memory safety. But I do care about being as close to the metal as possible, and being able to understand the compiled code.

kovac 4y ago

Can C really completely go away as long as there's embedded programming? Are there any other alternatives for that domain?

Tomte 4y ago
There are embedded devices programmed in other languages, you know, and there have been for decades. In Ada, for example. Which is an even better fit to the domain than C (better ways to describe hardware idiosyncracies).
Zagitta 4y ago
Rust is rapidly picking up steam in the embedded sphere :-) Unfortunately it's an industry with a lot of stubborn old people so I don't see any major changes happening until they've retired but I'm willing to bet that async is going to revolutionize embedded development. Being able to await interrupts and doing efficient cooperative scheduling while writing straight forward code is a massive QoL improvement which is what embassy is enabling: https://embassy.dev/ https://embassy.dev/
pjmlp 4y ago
Yes, compilers for C++, BASIC, Pascal, Ada are around, mostly commercial and people pay to keep those companies in business, for powerfull microcontrollers where real time GC is an option, there are Oberon, .NET and Java as well. There are surelly other factors that weight in using C, but not for lack of options (in many cases).
KnowOneYouNo 4y ago
Ada is a much better and modern alternative for embedded, real-time and/or systems programming. Its mature, (although still evolving) and very scalable from very, very small to very, very large systems. It also supports interoperability with C and C++. It is a primary language in GCC. See https://ada-lang.io/ https://ada-lang.io/ and https://learn.adacore.com/ https://learn.adacore.com/ Unfortunately Ada is held back by a genuine lack of awareness and some old misinformation baggage.
- 4y ago

jillesvangurp 4y ago

In a way, it's already happening. Many big tech companies are now defaulting to other languages than C and are actively discouraging the use of C or C++ for new code. They still have a big vested interest in maintaining existing code of course. That's not going to disappear overnight obviously.

pillefitz 4y ago
Do you have examples? Is it all going towards Rust or are there other big tech-backed contenders?
- timbit42 4y ago
  I read recently that parts of the code for Artemis are written in Ada. Ada is also used on the ISS. Makes me wonder who besides NASA might be using Ada due to its' safety.

jcranmer 4y ago

My prediction is that C will die off as a language long before Fortran and COBOL. What keeps a language like Fortran alive is that it is used in an application niche where rewriting is done at best ship-of-Theseus style, and the friction of using a new language for a component far outweighs the benefits of doing so (weather models are a good example here). For COBOL, it remains in applications where the cost of a switch or rewrite includes a low risk of catastrophic, and therefore expensive, failure (see Southwest Airlines for a very public and recent example of such a failure). C does have a similar kind of niche at first glance: systems programming is of course conservative, rewriting everything is unlikely, and of course, C is the language used for ABI. Except on closer inspection, that moat is remarkably shallow. Being the language of ABI means that every competitor language has some way to speak C guaranteed, so the friction of rewriting systems software Ship-of-Theseus-style is much lower (though still nonzero). Systems software is rewritten from scratch on a much higher cadence: in the last 20 years or so, most of the userspace system glue for Linux has been replaced (e.g., systemd, iproute2, pulseaudio, wayland). And we've learned over the past few decades that there's no practical way to fix C's fundamental unsafety issues with software engineering practices, and C's committee is too conservative to consider retrofitting the necessary features to be able to fix unsafety at a language level (to say nothing of getting people to use it). There is already a small clutch of languages that can serve C's niches that don't have the same fundamental unsafety issues, and right now, we're sort of at an experimental stage of system software trying them out. It's not unreasonable to believe that within a decade or so, one or more of these languages would be considered a standard, safe choice for implementing new systems software--and the use of C in new projects will start dropping. At some point, the proliferation of non-C systems projects will make people point out that having these components talk through C's ABI is too limited in functionality, and a system will change its ABI from C to some other language. And once it is no longer the language of ABI, C will lack its moat that keeps it alive, and it will start dying, though its death will be a slow, agonizing death.

Wadajot 4y ago

> that happens to be programmed in Fortran. SciPy is a highly optimized library and Fortran is faster than C for some tasks: https://stackoverflow.com/a/146186/3383640 https://stackoverflow.com/a/146186/3383640

Tozen 4y ago

The problem is that there isn't anything to replace C, that would be acceptable enough. C has become a quasi protocol, and used in exchanges between languages. One could argue it's better for newer languages to embrace and excel in interop with C, while providing more advantages, being safer in comparison, or greater ease of use. As is arguably the case with Vlang, Dlang, Nim, etc... If anything, C may still be going strong for another 20 to 30 years.