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There's no tool boring enough to prevent any chance of regret. At the end of the day, it's really, really difficult to anticipate where your pain points will ac

by jchw 2y ago

There's no tool boring enough to prevent any chance of regret. At the end of the day, it's really, really difficult to anticipate where your pain points will actually wind up in the real world. In practice, I've had lots of really good production success with Go and not too much heartache about the choice. Since adopting it personally (in around 2014) almost every company I've gone to work since has used Go in some capacity and that capacity was usually growing because it was working for them. Will you regret choosing Go? Maybe. Or, maybe not.

coldtea 2y ago
>There's no tool boring enough to prevent any chance of regret. I'm not so sure. I know C programmers that swear by it, warts and all, with absolutely zero regrets for using it e.g. in the embedded space.
- jchw 2y ago
  If anyone tells you C is "boring", that's just plain and simple bullshit. C gives you undefined behavior, buggy compilers (yes even for simple C code, MSVC is especially bad at plain C but there are other offenders) and the world's worst standard library for manipulating strings. Using C in embedded development is probably OK, even if you have to suffer with whatever crappy vendor compiler you are stuck with, but that's only considering the pretty severe limitations that very resource-constrained embedded development typically has (e.g. no dynamic allocation.) C is only as boring as you force it to be, and you really have to force it to be. That said... the thing about the embedded space is that most of it is C, always will be, and may continue to be for the foreseeable future. It's really hard to really know what you have to regret if all you've ever known is C.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >If anyone tells you C is "boring", that's just plain and simple bullshit. C gives you undefined behavior, buggy compilers (yes even for simple C code, MSVC is especially bad at plain C but there are other offenders) and the world's worst standard library for manipulating strings. Boring doesn't mean "has no issues" or "takes care of everything for you". It means, stable syntax, lots of mature tooling and compilers, and any problems the language has are well known. Of the various languages around, C is the least likely one to have "buggy compilers" (issues in MSVC because MS compilers focus on C++ are a different thing, also falling in the "known" category).
    - jchw 2y ago
      > It means, stable syntax, lots of mature tooling and compilers, and any problems the language has are well known. In case of C what it really means is that the compiler codebases are extremely old and sometimes in rather bad shape. Speaking of stable, C hasn't just stayed still: The C23 standard adds plenty of fun new things, like an annotation for unreachable code. Modern C has threads and synchronization primitives, #embed, complex numbers, and plenty more. > Of the various languages around, C is the least likely one to have "buggy compilers" C compilers are still routinely buggy, because the memory model is surprisingly tricky, there are many edge cases in the specification that are subtle and despite being fairly basic are not stressed often enough to come up, and because optimizing C while adhering to its rules about defined behavior is an unending arms race about what is still "technically" compliant with the standard. Again, this is especially true if we're considering embedded development where the compiler you have might be a random hacked up old build of some vendor compiler rather than at least being recent GCC or Clang. In that case, even if you only consider a small subset of C99, there's still plenty of room for things to go wrong. By any standard you can come up with, C is just plain-and-simple not a boring reliable solution. As it turns out, something being old and relatively simple isn't enough to make it boring; you can still have a pathological case that is just an absurd clusterfuck. I will grant you one thing: it is the most boring embedded development solution. But come on. The best modern competition is Rust. Being more boring than Rust is not exactly an impressive accomplishment, especially when you consider how much practical value Rust has to offer.
      - coldtea 2y ago
        >In case of C what it really means is that the compiler codebases are extremely old and sometimes in rather bad shape Statistically nobody writing C code gets to worry about a compiler error. >Speaking of stable, C hasn't just stayed still: The C23 standard adds plenty of fun new things, like an annotation for unreachable code. Modern C has threads and synchronization primitives, #embed, complex numbers, and plenty more. Compared to any other modern language, this is so still that C could make a living as a living statue... >By any standard you can come up with, C is just plain-and-simple not a boring reliable solution. C is the de facto language that's considered a boring and reliable solution. The points made are less substance and more pedantic nit picking ("yeah, it's a language with the most mature and relied upon compilers, but the code is old dawg", "yeah, it's one of the most convervative languages to change, and you can compile decades old code just fine, but they added some stuff in C99, C23, etc"). And Rust is still very niche, single compiler, quickly changing affair. Compared to C and C++ adoption (which is a big yardstick of a tech being "boring") it doesn't even register.

by jchw 2y ago

coldtea 2y ago

>There's no tool boring enough to prevent any chance of regret. I'm not so sure. I know C programmers that swear by it, warts and all, with absolutely zero regrets for using it e.g. in the embedded space.

jchw 2y ago
If anyone tells you C is "boring", that's just plain and simple bullshit. C gives you undefined behavior, buggy compilers (yes even for simple C code, MSVC is especially bad at plain C but there are other offenders) and the world's worst standard library for manipulating strings. Using C in embedded development is probably OK, even if you have to suffer with whatever crappy vendor compiler you are stuck with, but that's only considering the pretty severe limitations that very resource-constrained embedded development typically has (e.g. no dynamic allocation.) C is only as boring as you force it to be, and you really have to force it to be. That said... the thing about the embedded space is that most of it is C, always will be, and may continue to be for the foreseeable future. It's really hard to really know what you have to regret if all you've ever known is C.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >If anyone tells you C is "boring", that's just plain and simple bullshit. C gives you undefined behavior, buggy compilers (yes even for simple C code, MSVC is especially bad at plain C but there are other offenders) and the world's worst standard library for manipulating strings. Boring doesn't mean "has no issues" or "takes care of everything for you". It means, stable syntax, lots of mature tooling and compilers, and any problems the language has are well known. Of the various languages around, C is the least likely one to have "buggy compilers" (issues in MSVC because MS compilers focus on C++ are a different thing, also falling in the "known" category).
  - jchw 2y ago
    > It means, stable syntax, lots of mature tooling and compilers, and any problems the language has are well known. In case of C what it really means is that the compiler codebases are extremely old and sometimes in rather bad shape. Speaking of stable, C hasn't just stayed still: The C23 standard adds plenty of fun new things, like an annotation for unreachable code. Modern C has threads and synchronization primitives, #embed, complex numbers, and plenty more. > Of the various languages around, C is the least likely one to have "buggy compilers" C compilers are still routinely buggy, because the memory model is surprisingly tricky, there are many edge cases in the specification that are subtle and despite being fairly basic are not stressed often enough to come up, and because optimizing C while adhering to its rules about defined behavior is an unending arms race about what is still "technically" compliant with the standard. Again, this is especially true if we're considering embedded development where the compiler you have might be a random hacked up old build of some vendor compiler rather than at least being recent GCC or Clang. In that case, even if you only consider a small subset of C99, there's still plenty of room for things to go wrong. By any standard you can come up with, C is just plain-and-simple not a boring reliable solution. As it turns out, something being old and relatively simple isn't enough to make it boring; you can still have a pathological case that is just an absurd clusterfuck. I will grant you one thing: it is the most boring embedded development solution. But come on. The best modern competition is Rust. Being more boring than Rust is not exactly an impressive accomplishment, especially when you consider how much practical value Rust has to offer.
    - coldtea 2y ago
      >In case of C what it really means is that the compiler codebases are extremely old and sometimes in rather bad shape Statistically nobody writing C code gets to worry about a compiler error. >Speaking of stable, C hasn't just stayed still: The C23 standard adds plenty of fun new things, like an annotation for unreachable code. Modern C has threads and synchronization primitives, #embed, complex numbers, and plenty more. Compared to any other modern language, this is so still that C could make a living as a living statue... >By any standard you can come up with, C is just plain-and-simple not a boring reliable solution. C is the de facto language that's considered a boring and reliable solution. The points made are less substance and more pedantic nit picking ("yeah, it's a language with the most mature and relied upon compilers, but the code is old dawg", "yeah, it's one of the most convervative languages to change, and you can compile decades old code just fine, but they added some stuff in C99, C23, etc"). And Rust is still very niche, single compiler, quickly changing affair. Compared to C and C++ adoption (which is a big yardstick of a tech being "boring") it doesn't even register.