4 ms·

I'd almost always prefer c99 to shell for anything more than 100 lines of code or so. There is even a project I saw here recently that can bootstrap tcc in pure

by norir 2y ago

I'd almost always prefer c99 to shell for anything more than 100 lines of code or so. There is even a project I saw here recently that can bootstrap tcc in pure shell (which can then be used to bootstrap gcc). I'm somewhat skeptical that bash will still be used for anything but legacy scripts in 30 years, despite it's impressive longevity to this point, but I could sadly be proven wrong.

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
So, if you wanted to write something that you would be pretty sure could easily run on machines in 30 years time, what would you use? I don't think c99 would be a good choice as processors will likely be different in 30 years time. If you had your program on e.g. a usb stick and you manage to load it onto a machine, it'd only be able to run if you had the same architecture. Even nowadays, you'd run into difficulties with arm and x86 differences. Some kind of bytecode language might seem better (e.g. java), but I have my doubts about backwards compatibility. I wonder if Java code from 20 years ago would just run happily on a new Java version. However, there's also the issue of Java not being installed everywhere.
- wiseowise 2y ago
  > I wonder if Java code from 20 years ago would just run happily on a new Java version. Absolutely.
  - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
    That's good to know. I haven't touched Java myself in years, but at work I hear of developers complaining that our code runs on Java 11 and they haven't been given the time to move it to a more recent version. Personally, I've encountered great difficulties with some old SAN software that required a Java 6 web plugin that I couldn't get running on anything other than Internet Explorer - I kept an XP VM with the correct version just for that. I suspect a large part of the problem was the software incorrectly attempts to check that the version is at least 6, but fails when the version is newer (they obviously didn't test it when later versions got released).

by norir 2y ago

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago

So, if you wanted to write something that you would be pretty sure could easily run on machines in 30 years time, what would you use? I don't think c99 would be a good choice as processors will likely be different in 30 years time. If you had your program on e.g. a usb stick and you manage to load it onto a machine, it'd only be able to run if you had the same architecture. Even nowadays, you'd run into difficulties with arm and x86 differences. Some kind of bytecode language might seem better (e.g. java), but I have my doubts about backwards compatibility. I wonder if Java code from 20 years ago would just run happily on a new Java version. However, there's also the issue of Java not being installed everywhere.

wiseowise 2y ago
> I wonder if Java code from 20 years ago would just run happily on a new Java version. Absolutely.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
  That's good to know. I haven't touched Java myself in years, but at work I hear of developers complaining that our code runs on Java 11 and they haven't been given the time to move it to a more recent version. Personally, I've encountered great difficulties with some old SAN software that required a Java 6 web plugin that I couldn't get running on anything other than Internet Explorer - I kept an XP VM with the correct version just for that. I suspect a large part of the problem was the software incorrectly attempts to check that the version is at least 6, but fails when the version is newer (they obviously didn't test it when later versions got released).