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>why to use C over C++ today? Simplicity. You can keep the entire language in your head and everything is explicit with no "magic" involved. That said, you mi

>why to use C over C++ today? Simplicity. You can keep the entire language in your head and everything is explicit with no "magic" involved. That said, you might want to start moving to C++ slowly, first as a "better C with user-defined types" and then to OOP/Generic/etc. programming goodness which gives you a much larger design space.

JonChesterfield 4y ago
There's pretty much all the same compiler magic either way. At least C++ gives you placement new and std::launder, C gives you malloc and you cross your fingers that the compiler's alias analysis goes your way for now.
WalterBright 4y ago
> You can keep the entire language in your head Explain, without looking it up, exactly how macro expansion works. (Don't feel bad. I've written 3 implementations of the CPP, and still couldn't tell you how it works without carefully reading it again.)
- ndesaulniers 4y ago
  Right, you can "hide" what's going on in otherwise proceedural C codebases w/ the preprocessor. To be more charitable to OP, in C++ you can further "hide" what's going on with destructors in addition to the preprocessor. (I like RAII and hope more C programmers can learn to appreciate it. I have fixed and reviewed many fixes in the Linux kernel for -Wsometime-initialized because error handling using goto is a constant source of programmer mistakes introducing UB). I'd love to chat sometime about approaches to implementing a CPP!
  - int_19h 4y ago
    It's not even that macros can hide complexity. It's that the specification for the C preprocessor is itself rather complicated and non-obvious - e.g. what happens when nesting even simple macros, or even something as basic as tokenization.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Right, I was talking about the specification, not the use. How people use the preprocessor is by just fiddling with it till it delivers what they want, then they move on.
mhh__ 4y ago
You can keep the language in your head, but there's good empirical evidence you can't keep the code in your (companies collective) head.

JonChesterfield 4y ago

There's pretty much all the same compiler magic either way. At least C++ gives you placement new and std::launder, C gives you malloc and you cross your fingers that the compiler's alias analysis goes your way for now.

WalterBright 4y ago

> You can keep the entire language in your head Explain, without looking it up, exactly how macro expansion works. (Don't feel bad. I've written 3 implementations of the CPP, and still couldn't tell you how it works without carefully reading it again.)

ndesaulniers 4y ago
Right, you can "hide" what's going on in otherwise proceedural C codebases w/ the preprocessor. To be more charitable to OP, in C++ you can further "hide" what's going on with destructors in addition to the preprocessor. (I like RAII and hope more C programmers can learn to appreciate it. I have fixed and reviewed many fixes in the Linux kernel for -Wsometime-initialized because error handling using goto is a constant source of programmer mistakes introducing UB). I'd love to chat sometime about approaches to implementing a CPP!
- int_19h 4y ago
  It's not even that macros can hide complexity. It's that the specification for the C preprocessor is itself rather complicated and non-obvious - e.g. what happens when nesting even simple macros, or even something as basic as tokenization.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Right, I was talking about the specification, not the use. How people use the preprocessor is by just fiddling with it till it delivers what they want, then they move on.

mhh__ 4y ago

You can keep the language in your head, but there's good empirical evidence you can't keep the code in your (companies collective) head.