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I love C. As far as I can tell, there isn't anyone on the face of the planet trying to build anything like C in order to replace it. Rust isn't it. Rust is deci

I love C. As far as I can tell, there isn't anyone on the face of the planet trying to build anything like C in order to replace it. Rust isn't it. Rust is decidedly a "C++ replacement," if anything. Go is the closest in terms of philosophy, but Go isn't it either, because its standard implementation is garbage collected, among a number of other concerns. There is almost certainly SOMEONE out there, a random nobody on GitHub or elsewhere actually trying to write something that is as close to C in terms of philosophy and execution but utilizes some modern niceties, but I don't know who they are. If you want to replace C, though, you actually have to get in C's skin, and undulate and move like C does. But here's the kicker: absolutely no major language seems to want to do this, so they're all dead on arrival. No other language has the same ability to interop with other languages. No other language gets nearly as close to writing something that you can have an idea of what the underlying assembly looks like when you write it. No other language seems to care about the surrounding ecosystems C operates in or think about topics like ELF/Portable Executable/Mach-O. Why? Because all of them operate in their own little bubble. No other language wants to expose those details to you. They want you to operate in the world of MyWorldLang. What's "name mangling?" What are "shared libraries?" But you can't displace C if you don't care at all about POSIX or FFIs or assembly output or the host OS, and none of them do. If you operate in the world of VegetableLang, they want you to work with "CarrotLib" and "Tomato constructs," and "VegThreads." And all of this other nonsense that has nothing to do with hardware. And then we end up with all of this garbage software and fewer and fewer opportunities for people to learn how to utilize their hardware, because guess what, there is no abstraction layer that will automagically help you get your records into cache lines. You HAVE to count those bytes yourself somewhere, sometime. C is so powerful and long lasting because people who want to displace C and related languages aren't even in the same ballpark. They're on another planet. In another universe. Apparently working with a CPU or RAM to them is like asking how relevant it is for someone to be able to throw a golf ball into a basketball hoop from the three-pointer line in the fourth quarter of a football game.

matt_daemon 4y ago
> As far as I can tell, there isn't anyone on the face of the planet trying to build anything like C in order to replace it. To the best of my knowledge this is what Zig is trying to do. https://ziglang.org/ https://ziglang.org/
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  Thank you for mentioning this! I wonder if Zig is the closest modern thing to C that we have? D seems to not want to fill the ANSI C role. Walter Bright seems to be a bright guy, but I want a programming language that follows the philosophies embodied and manifested in C. You can sort of get the idea that the guys behind Go roughly had this sort of Unix-esque philosophy mentality, but they never come out and explicitly say it[1][2], and so I think it wasn't an explicit goal for them. [1]: https://go.dev/blog/5years https://go.dev/blog/5years [2]: https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponenti... Edit: Hahaha, I didn't catch myself with the "bright" thing.
  - hgs3 4y ago
    I've only toyed around with it, but D does offer the -BetterC flag [1] FWIW. [1] https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > Walter Bright seems to be a bright guy I had to change my born name from Walter Dummkopf.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > I want a programming language that follows the philosophies embodied and manifested in C I don't really know what is missing on that front in DasBetterC. D can call any C code directly, D even has a built in assembler. D can import C code. And you can program free of the depredations of the C preprocessor.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > I didn't catch myself with the "bright" thing. When my dad was in the Air Force, the commander assigned Major Smart to be his office mate, for the sole purpose of putting "Bright & Smart" on the door. He figured nothing could go wrong in that department.
- Tozen 4y ago
AndyKelley 4y ago
hello
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  I guess you're the guy! I'm learning now. :) But you're not the "nobody on GitHub" person I'm describing so I guess we need more people talking about and promoting Zig. I suppose these things just take time.
  - AndyKelley 4y ago
    I am actually. Check out this 8 years old blog post (a couple months before I started zig): http://genesisdaw.org/post/progress-so-far.html http://genesisdaw.org/post/progress-so-far.html In particular: > So I wanted templates from C++. And atomics from C++11. But that's about it. Other than that, I want to code like I'm in C. The beauty of C-style coding is that the control flow is so simple, it's impossible to not know what code is doing. Contrast that with fancy C++ stuff and you never know what's going to happen or what each line of code is going to do. > I figured out how to have my cake and eat it too. I discovered that you can compile with g++ and link with gcc, like so: g++ -nodefaultlibs -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti -std=c++11 -c main.cpp -o main.o gcc -o main main.o > As long as you don't use anything from the C++ standard library, you end up with working code that was compiled with the C++ compiler and does not depend on libstdc++. > With clang it's even easier, just don't put -lstdc++ on the linker line.
    - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
      Very interesting! I meant though that you're not a "nobody." People know of Zig, but might be people like me who don't know a tremendous amount about Zig.
      - AndyKelley 4y ago
        I'm being a little cheeky, but I'm pointing out that actually, in fact, I was exactly this nobody that you are talking about for a period of time, and I had a very similar inner thought process as you do in the parent comment :)
WalterBright 4y ago
> there isn't anyone on the face of the planet trying to build anything like C in order to replace it Das Better C: https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html It's essentially D without the garbage collector or D runtime library. Just the C runtime library. Das Better C has C syntax and semantics, but leaves behind the C preprocessor. It adds modules, metaprogramming and memory safety (has bounds checked arrays, for example). C compatibility is arranged with ImportC.
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  Thank you for replying, Walter. I enjoy reading your comments here. :)
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    I always like posting about programming!
    - fsckboy 4y ago
      a few days ago somebody here poked fun at a guy on another (linked from here) forum, for jumping into a discussion of a project's decision to rewrite from C++ to Rust. What had the guy being criticized done to receive rebuke? Suggested they should stop and look at D! I admit I thought to myself, "uh oh, Walter's at it again, all over the internet now!" :)
- Ingaz 4y ago
  I like D. Book by Alexandrescu was like a fantasy novel for young programmers in company where I worked. One of us discovered this book and tell others. A bit later everybody was "infected". Mostly javers and dotnetters and it was constant "Wow! It's possible to do such way? Why we don't do that?" So, you influenced a lot of my friends in a right way. Thank you!
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Thanks for the kind words! Andrei is indeed a treasure.
jcranmer 4y ago
> But you can't displace C if you don't care at all about POSIX or FFIs or assembly output or the host OS, and none of them do. As someone who cares about FFIs, I really hate C in that it is just so limiting in its ability to express FFI. C can't support things like multiple return values, unwind, or vector types (and this is before we get to higher-level language concepts!), and since most languages don't attempt to support an FFI interface that isn't based on C, you're stuck not being able to support these in your own interface. And worse, that we're largely stuck with the POSIX interface to the OS, we're forced to use unholy abominations like errno or POSIX signals that really should have died thirty years ago.
kasajian 4y ago
there are a lot of similar languages and many being created every year. They're just not very popular.
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  Yeah, I think the issue with things like this is simply that developers don't like to promote. Clearly right here you can see I'm learning more about Zig, and about features of D I hadn't heard of before, and that's from guys who DO promote. (And well, I would like to add.)
- Tozen 4y ago
  Exactly. All this "C killer" talk, is a bit too much, and in many cases way too premature. Better to have strong C interop, be a demonstrably useful alternative language for its users, then see how the dice rolls.
hilariouswhip 4y ago
> As far as I can tell, there isn't anyone on the face of the planet trying to build anything like C in order to replace it. Yeah because it would be a bad idea.
gavinhoward 4y ago
I agree. I think Zig is the best at pretending to operate with C, but it's still pretend. You need to do special stuff to interoperate with C. Disclaimer: I'm biased because I'm trying make a C killer even better than Zig is.
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  Please share a link if you're able!
  - gavinhoward 4y ago
    Well, it's still a work in progress, but I have some docs. It's called Yao. The main repo is https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc , which is a monorepo that has other stuff as well. Yao defines two types of files. A "package" file defines stuff that a package can export. A package file looks like this: https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/build.pkg.rig https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/build.p... . A "script" file is straight code, like a script. For a package, it is equivalent to `init()` functions for packages in Go. For a program, the main script file is the `main()`. A script file looks like this: https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/build.rig https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/build.r... . Note: once the compiler/interpreter is at MVP, those two files will be working code. They will be the build scripts of the repo. Speaking of the build scripts, the language has a way to allow users to define keywords. The build system already uses that to define its own keywords, turning Yao into a build system DSL. (Yes, the first program written in Yao will be used to build Yao. It's a great test of the language.) An example file, with explanation comments, is at https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/src/yao/example.y https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/src/yao... . All of the docs are at https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/docs/yao https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/docs/ya... , but they are mostly design docs. I think that should be enough links to get you started. Pay particular attention to the example.y file w.r.t. C interoperability. The basic points are: * Every function and type is associated with a C symbol, even if overloaded. * Structs are laid out exactly like C. (There will be another compound type that won't have that guarantee, but it won't be default, and it, too, will have a C ABI.) * It will have unions and enums like C. * It will always use the C ABI, defining extensions to it for things like methods, and those definitions will be defined in the spec that every Yao compiler has to adhere to. * It will always have the option to compile to C. C will be its bootstrap language. That said, I still think there are many weaknesses in Yao compared to C. I don't have much confidence it will actually be a C killer, mostly because I'm not sure anymore that it is possible to add to C and kill it.

matt_daemon 4y ago

> As far as I can tell, there isn't anyone on the face of the planet trying to build anything like C in order to replace it. To the best of my knowledge this is what Zig is trying to do. https://ziglang.org/ https://ziglang.org/

andrewmcwatters 4y ago
Thank you for mentioning this! I wonder if Zig is the closest modern thing to C that we have? D seems to not want to fill the ANSI C role. Walter Bright seems to be a bright guy, but I want a programming language that follows the philosophies embodied and manifested in C. You can sort of get the idea that the guys behind Go roughly had this sort of Unix-esque philosophy mentality, but they never come out and explicitly say it[1][2], and so I think it wasn't an explicit goal for them. [1]: https://go.dev/blog/5years https://go.dev/blog/5years [2]: https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponenti... Edit: Hahaha, I didn't catch myself with the "bright" thing.
- hgs3 4y ago
  I've only toyed around with it, but D does offer the -BetterC flag [1] FWIW. [1] https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > Walter Bright seems to be a bright guy I had to change my born name from Walter Dummkopf.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > I want a programming language that follows the philosophies embodied and manifested in C I don't really know what is missing on that front in DasBetterC. D can call any C code directly, D even has a built in assembler. D can import C code. And you can program free of the depredations of the C preprocessor.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > I didn't catch myself with the "bright" thing. When my dad was in the Air Force, the commander assigned Major Smart to be his office mate, for the sole purpose of putting "Bright & Smart" on the door. He figured nothing could go wrong in that department.
Tozen 4y ago

AndyKelley 4y ago

hello

andrewmcwatters 4y ago
I guess you're the guy! I'm learning now. :) But you're not the "nobody on GitHub" person I'm describing so I guess we need more people talking about and promoting Zig. I suppose these things just take time.
- AndyKelley 4y ago
  I am actually. Check out this 8 years old blog post (a couple months before I started zig): http://genesisdaw.org/post/progress-so-far.html http://genesisdaw.org/post/progress-so-far.html In particular: > So I wanted templates from C++. And atomics from C++11. But that's about it. Other than that, I want to code like I'm in C. The beauty of C-style coding is that the control flow is so simple, it's impossible to not know what code is doing. Contrast that with fancy C++ stuff and you never know what's going to happen or what each line of code is going to do. > I figured out how to have my cake and eat it too. I discovered that you can compile with g++ and link with gcc, like so: g++ -nodefaultlibs -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti -std=c++11 -c main.cpp -o main.o gcc -o main main.o > As long as you don't use anything from the C++ standard library, you end up with working code that was compiled with the C++ compiler and does not depend on libstdc++. > With clang it's even easier, just don't put -lstdc++ on the linker line.
  - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
    Very interesting! I meant though that you're not a "nobody." People know of Zig, but might be people like me who don't know a tremendous amount about Zig.
    - AndyKelley 4y ago
      I'm being a little cheeky, but I'm pointing out that actually, in fact, I was exactly this nobody that you are talking about for a period of time, and I had a very similar inner thought process as you do in the parent comment :)

WalterBright 4y ago

> there isn't anyone on the face of the planet trying to build anything like C in order to replace it Das Better C: https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html It's essentially D without the garbage collector or D runtime library. Just the C runtime library. Das Better C has C syntax and semantics, but leaves behind the C preprocessor. It adds modules, metaprogramming and memory safety (has bounds checked arrays, for example). C compatibility is arranged with ImportC.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago
Thank you for replying, Walter. I enjoy reading your comments here. :)
- WalterBright 4y ago
  I always like posting about programming!
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    a few days ago somebody here poked fun at a guy on another (linked from here) forum, for jumping into a discussion of a project's decision to rewrite from C++ to Rust. What had the guy being criticized done to receive rebuke? Suggested they should stop and look at D! I admit I thought to myself, "uh oh, Walter's at it again, all over the internet now!" :)
Ingaz 4y ago
I like D. Book by Alexandrescu was like a fantasy novel for young programmers in company where I worked. One of us discovered this book and tell others. A bit later everybody was "infected". Mostly javers and dotnetters and it was constant "Wow! It's possible to do such way? Why we don't do that?" So, you influenced a lot of my friends in a right way. Thank you!
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Thanks for the kind words! Andrei is indeed a treasure.

jcranmer 4y ago

> But you can't displace C if you don't care at all about POSIX or FFIs or assembly output or the host OS, and none of them do. As someone who cares about FFIs, I really hate C in that it is just so limiting in its ability to express FFI. C can't support things like multiple return values, unwind, or vector types (and this is before we get to higher-level language concepts!), and since most languages don't attempt to support an FFI interface that isn't based on C, you're stuck not being able to support these in your own interface. And worse, that we're largely stuck with the POSIX interface to the OS, we're forced to use unholy abominations like errno or POSIX signals that really should have died thirty years ago.

kasajian 4y ago

there are a lot of similar languages and many being created every year. They're just not very popular.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago
Yeah, I think the issue with things like this is simply that developers don't like to promote. Clearly right here you can see I'm learning more about Zig, and about features of D I hadn't heard of before, and that's from guys who DO promote. (And well, I would like to add.)
Tozen 4y ago
Exactly. All this "C killer" talk, is a bit too much, and in many cases way too premature. Better to have strong C interop, be a demonstrably useful alternative language for its users, then see how the dice rolls.

hilariouswhip 4y ago

> As far as I can tell, there isn't anyone on the face of the planet trying to build anything like C in order to replace it. Yeah because it would be a bad idea.

gavinhoward 4y ago

I agree. I think Zig is the best at pretending to operate with C, but it's still pretend. You need to do special stuff to interoperate with C. Disclaimer: I'm biased because I'm trying make a C killer even better than Zig is.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago
Please share a link if you're able!
- gavinhoward 4y ago
  Well, it's still a work in progress, but I have some docs. It's called Yao. The main repo is https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc , which is a monorepo that has other stuff as well. Yao defines two types of files. A "package" file defines stuff that a package can export. A package file looks like this: https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/build.pkg.rig https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/build.p... . A "script" file is straight code, like a script. For a package, it is equivalent to `init()` functions for packages in Go. For a program, the main script file is the `main()`. A script file looks like this: https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/build.rig https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/build.r... . Note: once the compiler/interpreter is at MVP, those two files will be working code. They will be the build scripts of the repo. Speaking of the build scripts, the language has a way to allow users to define keywords. The build system already uses that to define its own keywords, turning Yao into a build system DSL. (Yes, the first program written in Yao will be used to build Yao. It's a great test of the language.) An example file, with explanation comments, is at https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/src/yao/example.y https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/src/yao... . All of the docs are at https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/docs/yao https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/commit/c0ade4cc5b/docs/ya... , but they are mostly design docs. I think that should be enough links to get you started. Pay particular attention to the example.y file w.r.t. C interoperability. The basic points are: * Every function and type is associated with a C symbol, even if overloaded. * Structs are laid out exactly like C. (There will be another compound type that won't have that guarantee, but it won't be default, and it, too, will have a C ABI.) * It will have unions and enums like C. * It will always use the C ABI, defining extensions to it for things like methods, and those definitions will be defined in the spec that every Yao compiler has to adhere to. * It will always have the option to compile to C. C will be its bootstrap language. That said, I still think there are many weaknesses in Yao compared to C. I don't have much confidence it will actually be a C killer, mostly because I'm not sure anymore that it is possible to add to C and kill it.