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I agree with all of these comments. But... Unless you are an old-school coder who grew up with C, it is just so much easier to get stuff done with Python/Ruby o

I agree with all of these comments. But... Unless you are an old-school coder who grew up with C, it is just so much easier to get stuff done with Python/Ruby or, hell, Bash/Awk/Perl. Granted, that last was for very specific tasks, but still. Want to write security code? C is is your friend, but you better be good at it, very good.

exDM69 14y ago
> Unless you are an old-school coder who grew up with C, it is just so much easier to get stuff done with Python/Ruby or, hell, Bash/Awk/Perl. True, but who is going to write your Python/Ruby interpreters then? And using what language?
- uhhyeahdude 14y ago
  Oh, you are certainly on point. But how deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go? I mean, after reading "Trusting Trust", you really can't be sure of anything. Who writes your compilers? Assuming you are not specifically referring to security stuff, and more talking about a responsible community; well, I don't know. I do know that I need to get better at C. And that that was w/r/t interpreter comment, in case that implication was not obvious.
  - exDM69 14y ago
    This is why (good) computer science studies generally involve everything from CPU fundamentals to operating system programming and compiler design. I'm not afraid to look inside my interpreter, operating system kernel or my C compiler.
- shiven 14y ago
  > True, but who is going to write your Python/Ruby interpreters then? Pythonistas will. > And using what language? Using python. Case in point, Pypy. <\ :P>
  - uhhyeahdude 14y ago
    Fair point, sir. But I don't know that those are always optimal solutions.
  - exDM69 14y ago
    > Using python. Case in point, Pypy. Yes, PyPy is an excellent example of doing low level tasks in a high level language. It's also quite rare. I think in the future we'll see more examples of self-hosting dynamic languages that have a JIT-compiler based execution environment that combines interpretation and compilation. However, in comparison to the stuff that the PyPy guys are writing, C programming is easy. And I bet all of the PyPy programmers are excellent C programmers, because they have to be good with low level stuff anyway. I still advice learning C programming, and how interpreters and compilers work.
- uhhyeahdude 14y ago
  And, look, I'm relatively new to the game, so please forgive my ignorance when it appears - although I definitely get what you are saying with this comment.
redthrowaway 14y ago
For web and system administration tasks, sure. For anything where performance is an issue, you simply won't be using an interpreted language. C is by no means my go-to language for personal projects, but there's still a helluva lot of software out there that it would be folly to write in anything but.

exDM69 14y ago

> Unless you are an old-school coder who grew up with C, it is just so much easier to get stuff done with Python/Ruby or, hell, Bash/Awk/Perl. True, but who is going to write your Python/Ruby interpreters then? And using what language?

uhhyeahdude 14y ago
Oh, you are certainly on point. But how deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go? I mean, after reading "Trusting Trust", you really can't be sure of anything. Who writes your compilers? Assuming you are not specifically referring to security stuff, and more talking about a responsible community; well, I don't know. I do know that I need to get better at C. And that that was w/r/t interpreter comment, in case that implication was not obvious.
- exDM69 14y ago
  This is why (good) computer science studies generally involve everything from CPU fundamentals to operating system programming and compiler design. I'm not afraid to look inside my interpreter, operating system kernel or my C compiler.
shiven 14y ago
> True, but who is going to write your Python/Ruby interpreters then? Pythonistas will. > And using what language? Using python. Case in point, Pypy. <\ :P>
- uhhyeahdude 14y ago
  Fair point, sir. But I don't know that those are always optimal solutions.
- exDM69 14y ago
  > Using python. Case in point, Pypy. Yes, PyPy is an excellent example of doing low level tasks in a high level language. It's also quite rare. I think in the future we'll see more examples of self-hosting dynamic languages that have a JIT-compiler based execution environment that combines interpretation and compilation. However, in comparison to the stuff that the PyPy guys are writing, C programming is easy. And I bet all of the PyPy programmers are excellent C programmers, because they have to be good with low level stuff anyway. I still advice learning C programming, and how interpreters and compilers work.
uhhyeahdude 14y ago
And, look, I'm relatively new to the game, so please forgive my ignorance when it appears - although I definitely get what you are saying with this comment.

redthrowaway 14y ago

For web and system administration tasks, sure. For anything where performance is an issue, you simply won't be using an interpreted language. C is by no means my go-to language for personal projects, but there's still a helluva lot of software out there that it would be folly to write in anything but.