3 ms·

Is modern C really much more complicated than old C? C++ is a mess of course.

lioeters 10mo ago
I don't write modern C for daily use, so I can't really say. But I've been re-learning and writing C99 more these days, not professionally but personal use - and I appreciate the smallness of the language. Might even say C peaked at C99. I mean, I'd be crazy to say that C-like languages after C99, like Java, PHP, etc., are all misguided for how unnecessarily big and complex they are. It might be that I'm becoming more like a caveman programmer as I get older, I prefer dumb primitive tools.
- procaryote 10mo ago
  C11 adds a couple of nice things like static asserts which I use sometimes to document assumptions I make. They did add some optional sections like bounds checking that seem to have flopped, partly for being optional, partly for being half-baked. Having optional sections in general seems like a bad idea.
  - whou 10mo ago
    If you don't have compiler restrictions, C23 is also a pleasure to write. `typeof`, `constexpr`, `#embed`, `nullptr`, attributes and all.
  - uecker 10mo ago
    The big new thing in C11 was atomics and threading.
anthk 10mo ago
IDK about C11; but C99 doesn't change a lot compared to ANSI C. You can read The C Programming Language 2nd edition and pick up C99 in a week. It adds boleans, some float/complex math ops, an optional floating point definition and a few more goodies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C99 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C99 C++ by comparison it's a behemoth. If C++ died and, for instance, the FLTK guys rebased their libraries into C (and Boost for instance) it would be a big loss at first but Chromium and the like rewritten in C would slim down a bit, the complexity would plummet down and similar projects would use far less CPU and RAM. It's not just about the binary size; C++ today makes even the Common Lisp standard (even with UIOP and some de facto standard libraries from QuickLisp) pretty much human-manageable, and CL always has been a one-thousand pages thick standard with tons of bloat compared to Scheme or it's sibling Emacs Lisp. Go figure.
- procaryote 10mo ago
  C++ is a katamari ball of programming trends and half baked ideas. I get why google built golang, as they were already pretty strict about what parts of the c++ sediments you were allowed to use.
  - anthk 10mo ago
    Not Google actually, but the same people from C, AWK and Unix (and 9front, which is "Unix 2.0" and it has a simpler C (no POSIX bloat there) and the compilers are basically the philosophy of Golang (cross compile from any to any arch, CSP concurrency...) Also, the Limbo language it's basically pre-Go.
    - bmacho 10mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)#Hist... : "Go was designed at Google in 2007"
      - anthk 10mo ago
        No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsqueak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsqueak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_processes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_proce... https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/new_c_compilers/new_c_compiler.pdf https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/new_c_compilers/new_c_compil... It was amalgamated at Google. Originally Go used the Ken C compilers for Plan9. It still uses CSP. The syntax it's from Limbo/Inferno, and probably the GC came from Limbo too. If any, Golang was created for Google by reusing a big chunk of plan9 and Inferno's design, in some cases even straightly, as it shows with the concurrency model. Or the cross-compiling suite. A bit like MacOS X under Apple. We all know it wasn't born in a vacuum. It borrowed Mach, the NeXTStep API and the FreeBSD userland and they put the Carbon API on top for compatibility. Before that, the classic MacOS had nothing to do with Unix, C, Objective C, NeXT or the Mach kernel. Mac OS X is to NeXT what Go is for Alef/Inferno/Plan9 C. As every MacOS user it's using something like NeXTStep with the Macintosh UI design for the 21th century, Go users are like using a similar, futuristic version of the Limbo/Alef programming languages with a bit of the Plan9 concurrency and automatic crosscompilation.

I don't write modern C for daily use, so I can't really say. But I've been re-learning and writing C99 more these days, not professionally but personal use - and I appreciate the smallness of the language. Might even say C peaked at C99. I mean, I'd be crazy to say that C-like languages after C99, like Java, PHP, etc., are all misguided for how unnecessarily big and complex they are. It might be that I'm becoming more like a caveman programmer as I get older, I prefer dumb primitive tools.

procaryote 10mo ago
C11 adds a couple of nice things like static asserts which I use sometimes to document assumptions I make. They did add some optional sections like bounds checking that seem to have flopped, partly for being optional, partly for being half-baked. Having optional sections in general seems like a bad idea.
- whou 10mo ago
  If you don't have compiler restrictions, C23 is also a pleasure to write. `typeof`, `constexpr`, `#embed`, `nullptr`, attributes and all.
- uecker 10mo ago
  The big new thing in C11 was atomics and threading.

anthk 10mo ago

IDK about C11; but C99 doesn't change a lot compared to ANSI C. You can read The C Programming Language 2nd edition and pick up C99 in a week. It adds boleans, some float/complex math ops, an optional floating point definition and a few more goodies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C99 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C99 C++ by comparison it's a behemoth. If C++ died and, for instance, the FLTK guys rebased their libraries into C (and Boost for instance) it would be a big loss at first but Chromium and the like rewritten in C would slim down a bit, the complexity would plummet down and similar projects would use far less CPU and RAM. It's not just about the binary size; C++ today makes even the Common Lisp standard (even with UIOP and some de facto standard libraries from QuickLisp) pretty much human-manageable, and CL always has been a one-thousand pages thick standard with tons of bloat compared to Scheme or it's sibling Emacs Lisp. Go figure.

procaryote 10mo ago
C++ is a katamari ball of programming trends and half baked ideas. I get why google built golang, as they were already pretty strict about what parts of the c++ sediments you were allowed to use.
- anthk 10mo ago
  Not Google actually, but the same people from C, AWK and Unix (and 9front, which is "Unix 2.0" and it has a simpler C (no POSIX bloat there) and the compilers are basically the philosophy of Golang (cross compile from any to any arch, CSP concurrency...) Also, the Limbo language it's basically pre-Go.
  - bmacho 10mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)#Hist... : "Go was designed at Google in 2007"
    - anthk 10mo ago
      No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsqueak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsqueak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_processes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_proce... https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/new_c_compilers/new_c_compiler.pdf https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/new_c_compilers/new_c_compil... It was amalgamated at Google. Originally Go used the Ken C compilers for Plan9. It still uses CSP. The syntax it's from Limbo/Inferno, and probably the GC came from Limbo too. If any, Golang was created for Google by reusing a big chunk of plan9 and Inferno's design, in some cases even straightly, as it shows with the concurrency model. Or the cross-compiling suite. A bit like MacOS X under Apple. We all know it wasn't born in a vacuum. It borrowed Mach, the NeXTStep API and the FreeBSD userland and they put the Carbon API on top for compatibility. Before that, the classic MacOS had nothing to do with Unix, C, Objective C, NeXT or the Mach kernel. Mac OS X is to NeXT what Go is for Alef/Inferno/Plan9 C. As every MacOS user it's using something like NeXTStep with the Macintosh UI design for the 21th century, Go users are like using a similar, futuristic version of the Limbo/Alef programming languages with a bit of the Plan9 concurrency and automatic crosscompilation.