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None of what you said supports your initial claim that the author is ignorant. In fact, even if we pretend that everything you said is true, none of it contrad

None of what you said supports your initial claim that the author is ignorant. In fact, even if we pretend that everything you said is true, none of it contradicts the article, or the authors conclusions. Yes, C has lots of areas where other languages are better. And yet, it is still the most practical language to use because of the combination of things that it does well.

betterunix 14y ago
"it is still the most practical language" Only in extremely limited contexts: low-level code for operating systems that happened to have been written in C. Otherwise, there is a better language for pretty much every use-case of C.
- angersock 14y ago
  How might you suggest that I write a good compression, hashing, or encryption library with a lot of bit twiddling? Any good alternatives to C?
  - betterunix 14y ago
    Well, there is always Lisp: http://psg.com/~dlamkins/sl/chapter18.html http://psg.com/~dlamkins/sl/chapter18.html At least SBCL will generate efficient machine language for bit vector manipulations if you tell it the sizes of the vectors (or if it can infer that information). It might just be a matter of opinion, but I would say that Lisp beats the pants off C in terms of programming; you are almost never going to have to keep track of pointers or memory allocations, you have far less undefined behavior to deal with, and it is generally a more expressive language. SBCL and CMUCL also support a non-standard feature that is similar to inline assembly language in C, the VOP system, that allows you to utilize obscure instructions or change how your code will be generated, if there is some reason for doing that (e.g. if your encryption library will use AESNI). Of course, since you said "library," I assume you meant for this to be used in other programs, possibly programs not written in Lisp. Unfortunately, SBCL's support for that is still rough; commercial Lisp compilers may have better support for it. Of course, if you were targeting an OS written in Lisp, things would probably be different -- my view is that C's popularity is mostly a result of how many systems were written in C i.e. how much legacy code there is, and that were it not for that momentum C would be written off as an inexpressive and difficult to work with language.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  low-level code for operating systems that happened to have been written in C You say that like it is an accident that just about every major OS today is written in C or C/C++
  - betterunix 14y ago
    "You say that like it is an accident that just about every major OS today is written in C or C/C++" Is there some technical feature of C or C++ that makes those languages good for writing OSes, or that made OSes written in those languages overwhelmingly successful? You might argue that the simplicity of a C compiler made Unix successful because it helped with portability, but C is by no means unique in this regard -- a Lisp compiler can be equally simple, and can be used to bootstrap a more sophisticated compiler. Really, Unix won because the only real competition Unix vendors faced in the minicomputer and workstation market came from other Unix vendors; C was riding on the coattails of Unix. One would be hard-pressed to argue that Windows won because C++ is a great language, especially considering how Windows was plagued with bugs and security problems during its rise to prominence in the 90s (many of which resulted from bad pointer mechanics, which is what happens when you use a language that requires you to juggle pointers).
    - sliverstorm 14y ago
      One would be hard-pressed to argue that Windows won because C++ is a great language I'm not arguing that. I'm not even saying I know precisely why C or C/C++ is good. I'm just saying, when every major OS is written in it, can you really dismiss it so easily?
- papsosouid 14y ago
  No, there isn't. What would you write a database in? Or an SMTP server, or IMAP, or HTTP, or whatever else. There's a reason all that stuff is almost always done in C.

betterunix 14y ago

"it is still the most practical language" Only in extremely limited contexts: low-level code for operating systems that happened to have been written in C. Otherwise, there is a better language for pretty much every use-case of C.

angersock 14y ago
How might you suggest that I write a good compression, hashing, or encryption library with a lot of bit twiddling? Any good alternatives to C?
- betterunix 14y ago
  Well, there is always Lisp: http://psg.com/~dlamkins/sl/chapter18.html http://psg.com/~dlamkins/sl/chapter18.html At least SBCL will generate efficient machine language for bit vector manipulations if you tell it the sizes of the vectors (or if it can infer that information). It might just be a matter of opinion, but I would say that Lisp beats the pants off C in terms of programming; you are almost never going to have to keep track of pointers or memory allocations, you have far less undefined behavior to deal with, and it is generally a more expressive language. SBCL and CMUCL also support a non-standard feature that is similar to inline assembly language in C, the VOP system, that allows you to utilize obscure instructions or change how your code will be generated, if there is some reason for doing that (e.g. if your encryption library will use AESNI). Of course, since you said "library," I assume you meant for this to be used in other programs, possibly programs not written in Lisp. Unfortunately, SBCL's support for that is still rough; commercial Lisp compilers may have better support for it. Of course, if you were targeting an OS written in Lisp, things would probably be different -- my view is that C's popularity is mostly a result of how many systems were written in C i.e. how much legacy code there is, and that were it not for that momentum C would be written off as an inexpressive and difficult to work with language.
sliverstorm 14y ago
low-level code for operating systems that happened to have been written in C You say that like it is an accident that just about every major OS today is written in C or C/C++
- betterunix 14y ago
  "You say that like it is an accident that just about every major OS today is written in C or C/C++" Is there some technical feature of C or C++ that makes those languages good for writing OSes, or that made OSes written in those languages overwhelmingly successful? You might argue that the simplicity of a C compiler made Unix successful because it helped with portability, but C is by no means unique in this regard -- a Lisp compiler can be equally simple, and can be used to bootstrap a more sophisticated compiler. Really, Unix won because the only real competition Unix vendors faced in the minicomputer and workstation market came from other Unix vendors; C was riding on the coattails of Unix. One would be hard-pressed to argue that Windows won because C++ is a great language, especially considering how Windows was plagued with bugs and security problems during its rise to prominence in the 90s (many of which resulted from bad pointer mechanics, which is what happens when you use a language that requires you to juggle pointers).
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    One would be hard-pressed to argue that Windows won because C++ is a great language I'm not arguing that. I'm not even saying I know precisely why C or C/C++ is good. I'm just saying, when every major OS is written in it, can you really dismiss it so easily?
papsosouid 14y ago
No, there isn't. What would you write a database in? Or an SMTP server, or IMAP, or HTTP, or whatever else. There's a reason all that stuff is almost always done in C.