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I mean, there's a big header that says "Myth: C has no equivalent to “private”" and a code example about the private keyword, so that's why I started saying tha

I mean, there's a big header that says "Myth: C has no equivalent to “private”" and a code example about the private keyword, so that's why I started saying that. Even then, my points still apply: this isn't really equivalent to how encapsulation works in other languages due to the lack of granularity and the "extras" of all the usual language behavior that stops being supported.

lelanthran 3y ago
> I mean, there's a big header that says "Myth: C has no equivalent to “private”" and a code example about the private keyword, so that's why I started saying that. You are correct; I should change the heading to "Myth: C provides no encapsulation". I don't want to do it now, as the discussion is still ongoing and making this change now while people are commenting on the 'private equivalence" aspect would be gaslighting those people. > Even then, my points still apply: this isn't really equivalent to how encapsulation works in other languages due to the lack of granularity and the "extras" of all the usual language behavior that stops being supported. So? The myth the article addresses is "C has no encapsulation", not "C has great encapsulation". That C provides stronger encapsulation and stronger guarantees for upgrade migration is the specific myth that I am trying to address.
- gjulianm 3y ago
  I think that at this point this is a discussion about semantics, just as this other commenter pointed out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36758407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36758407 Yes, you can do something in C that somewhat resembles encapsulation. You could also do it in Python with a decorator that inspects the caller. You can also do inheritance and virtual functions in C. You could do anything in a Turing complete language. But usually when talking about "X language has Y" refers to whether the language has Y as part of the specification. In this case it isn't encapsulation as part of the specification (that's why it comes with all those downsides/extras) but as an artifact of other aspects of the language, that's why I say it's not really equivalent.

lelanthran 3y ago

> I mean, there's a big header that says "Myth: C has no equivalent to “private”" and a code example about the private keyword, so that's why I started saying that. You are correct; I should change the heading to "Myth: C provides no encapsulation". I don't want to do it now, as the discussion is still ongoing and making this change now while people are commenting on the 'private equivalence" aspect would be gaslighting those people. > Even then, my points still apply: this isn't really equivalent to how encapsulation works in other languages due to the lack of granularity and the "extras" of all the usual language behavior that stops being supported. So? The myth the article addresses is "C has no encapsulation", not "C has great encapsulation". That C provides stronger encapsulation and stronger guarantees for upgrade migration is the specific myth that I am trying to address.

gjulianm 3y ago
I think that at this point this is a discussion about semantics, just as this other commenter pointed out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36758407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36758407 Yes, you can do something in C that somewhat resembles encapsulation. You could also do it in Python with a decorator that inspects the caller. You can also do inheritance and virtual functions in C. You could do anything in a Turing complete language. But usually when talking about "X language has Y" refers to whether the language has Y as part of the specification. In this case it isn't encapsulation as part of the specification (that's why it comes with all those downsides/extras) but as an artifact of other aspects of the language, that's why I say it's not really equivalent.