4 ms·

What languages are they? As an academic, I am curious because I have languages that I hate that blissfully unaware academics use...

jmclnx 2y ago
One is COBOL, worked on that in the 80s. The other is c, which I went to in the 90s, that seemed to have started getting hate from everyone these days :) I prefer the K&R dialect is the version I started with.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  > The other is c, I struggle to take anyone very seriously that expresses a profound negative opinion about C - it is still so ubiquitous and odds are overwhelming that the person expressing this uses somewhere in their stack many libraries written in C anyway. I'd wager this is coming from the Rust ecosystem rising in prominence the last 10 years and Rust adherents being really passionate about that (cool! I take no opinion either way, please don't savagely downvote me). I find all such debates tiresome, I am much more interested in the why of doing something than the "how." A programming language is a tool to me, nothing more. If the tool sucks I will choose a different one and probably feel zero emotions about it, but acknowledge not everyone is this way.
  - mnk47 2y ago
    >I struggle to take anyone very seriously that expresses a profound negative opinion about C - it is still so ubiquitous and odds are overwhelming that the person expressing this uses somewhere in their stack many libraries written in C anyway. I like C, and I do think the hate mostly comes from the loud zealots in the Rust crowd, but this doesn't make sense to me. I hate car-centric planning, the fact that it's ubiquitous and that I drive around my city doesn't really affect the validity of my opinion.
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      I often feel like a common argument I hear from Rust evangelists is that "C is the worst, and this isn't C". It's a very silly argument, in my opinion. Better ones are actually about what makes Rust good, not that the alternative are evil.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 2y ago
    Paraphrasing you slightly: > I struggle to take anyone very seriously that expresses a profound negative opinion about [a language that] is still so ubiquitous and […] the person expressing this [probably] uses somewhere in their stack Are you saying that because C is popular and widely used, someone can't credibly hold a negative opinion on it? Are we required to think highly of things because they are popular?
    - JohnMakin 2y ago
      It’s very interesting you find my comment as prescriptive when I’m merely pointing out that C has historically been a good tool. In this person’s opinion, it sounds silly when people try to tear it down, often with some agenda. I mentioned Rust because it often seems to come from a very passionate camp there (again, cool! nothing wrong with that). As I said, programming languages are tools, some tools are good for one job and not another, and prescriptivist talk about such things I immediately tune out and cannot take very seriously. Luckily my opinion doesn’t matter and can be ignored.
  - imtringued 2y ago
    >I struggle to take anyone very seriously that expresses a profound negative opinion about C Those OpenSSH vulnerabilities really get stale you know... >The net effect of exploiting CVE-2024-6387 is a full system compromise and takeover, enabling threat actors to execute arbitrary code with the highest privileges, subvert security mechanisms, data theft, and even maintain persistent access. Ah, the joys of C.
- ocular-rockular 2y ago
  Can't comment on COBOL but honestly even basic fundamentals of C would benefit a lot of people IMO.

jmclnx 2y ago

One is COBOL, worked on that in the 80s. The other is c, which I went to in the 90s, that seemed to have started getting hate from everyone these days :) I prefer the K&R dialect is the version I started with.

JohnMakin 2y ago
> The other is c, I struggle to take anyone very seriously that expresses a profound negative opinion about C - it is still so ubiquitous and odds are overwhelming that the person expressing this uses somewhere in their stack many libraries written in C anyway. I'd wager this is coming from the Rust ecosystem rising in prominence the last 10 years and Rust adherents being really passionate about that (cool! I take no opinion either way, please don't savagely downvote me). I find all such debates tiresome, I am much more interested in the why of doing something than the "how." A programming language is a tool to me, nothing more. If the tool sucks I will choose a different one and probably feel zero emotions about it, but acknowledge not everyone is this way.
- mnk47 2y ago
  >I struggle to take anyone very seriously that expresses a profound negative opinion about C - it is still so ubiquitous and odds are overwhelming that the person expressing this uses somewhere in their stack many libraries written in C anyway. I like C, and I do think the hate mostly comes from the loud zealots in the Rust crowd, but this doesn't make sense to me. I hate car-centric planning, the fact that it's ubiquitous and that I drive around my city doesn't really affect the validity of my opinion.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    I often feel like a common argument I hear from Rust evangelists is that "C is the worst, and this isn't C". It's a very silly argument, in my opinion. Better ones are actually about what makes Rust good, not that the alternative are evil.
- TazeTSchnitzel 2y ago
  Paraphrasing you slightly: > I struggle to take anyone very seriously that expresses a profound negative opinion about [a language that] is still so ubiquitous and […] the person expressing this [probably] uses somewhere in their stack Are you saying that because C is popular and widely used, someone can't credibly hold a negative opinion on it? Are we required to think highly of things because they are popular?
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    It’s very interesting you find my comment as prescriptive when I’m merely pointing out that C has historically been a good tool. In this person’s opinion, it sounds silly when people try to tear it down, often with some agenda. I mentioned Rust because it often seems to come from a very passionate camp there (again, cool! nothing wrong with that). As I said, programming languages are tools, some tools are good for one job and not another, and prescriptivist talk about such things I immediately tune out and cannot take very seriously. Luckily my opinion doesn’t matter and can be ignored.
- imtringued 2y ago
  >I struggle to take anyone very seriously that expresses a profound negative opinion about C Those OpenSSH vulnerabilities really get stale you know... >The net effect of exploiting CVE-2024-6387 is a full system compromise and takeover, enabling threat actors to execute arbitrary code with the highest privileges, subvert security mechanisms, data theft, and even maintain persistent access. Ah, the joys of C.
ocular-rockular 2y ago
Can't comment on COBOL but honestly even basic fundamentals of C would benefit a lot of people IMO.