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> C does _not_ suck at networking, concurrency, security, or readability Yes, it does. You will not find buffer overflows in JavaScript. You will not find th

by ynniv 17y ago

> C does _not_ suck at networking, concurrency, security, or readability Yes, it does. You will not find buffer overflows in JavaScript. You will not find threads in haskell. You will not see polling loops or select with switch dispatched networking code in Seaside. Your program will be easier to read in python or JavaScript (depending on your block syntax preference). You say that C doesn't suck at these things, but it is more realistic to say that it is possible for these things to be done correctly in C. It is more likely that they will be done incorrectly in C than in other languages. Maybe the result will be slower, maybe it won't run on your watch, but correctness is more important than speed. Speed (of instruction) is easy to fix - just wait a year. Better to get your program correct and your algorithms efficient than to waste your time on speed. > The core C API can be kept in its entirety in a programmer's mind I'm not sure what that means, and I'm fairly certain that you aren't taking into account the complexities of modern compiler runtimes and CPU instruction reordering. If you think that the assembly output and runtime characteristics of C programs are simple, you haven't looked recently. More practically, I can keep as much of the python "API" in my mind as I generally use. Do you include common libraries in your definition of "API"? > Given that embedded systems make up something like 98% Well thats a useless statistic (and I hear that 90% of statistics are made up on the spot). Are you suggesting that 98% of programming jobs are for embedded systems? > Every year that goes by, C becomes more useful. That must be why the number of C books decreases every year, and why new app platforms use python and Java. C is a really easy language to port to new hardware. It runs in very constrained environments, like tiny embedded systems. It is a generally useful language to know as a computer science major. It is a common language because worse is better, but when it comes to laying the groundwork for your programming career, better is actually better. Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. > If you teach people to be comfortable dealing with C, they'll feel like Python is pie No they won't, they'll think that Python is C with garbage collection and no curly braces. People who learn C first write programs that look like C no matter what language they're using. I'm not purposely trolling here, it is my opinion that C is a poor language to teach students. If you find Lisp and Smalltalk to be too removed from industry, lets use python.

haberman 17y ago
> I'm not purposely trolling here, it is my opinion that C is a poor language to teach students. If you don't teach students C, you're denying them a deep understanding of how all of the higher levels are implemented. If all you know is Python but I know Python, C, UNIX system calls, and even assembly, I'm going to run circles around you, even if we're both working 100% in Python. For example, suppose your Python program says "import foo", but it's not finding module "foo". How can you debug what is happening? I'm going to take two seconds and run strace on the program to see what files the process is trying to open. You're going to... read some docs? Post a question on a message board? Or suppose that your Python program tries to do an open("foobar", "w") but the open fails with: IOError: [Errno 26] Text file busy: 'test' I'm going to look at the manpage for open(2) to figure out what this error means. You're going to... go ask somebody who understands system software? People who don't understand system software are totally helpless compared to people who do. You may see C fading into history. What I see is every single relevant technological innovation -- 2nd-gen JavaScript interpreters, Flash, the JVM, .NET, browsers, OS's -- ALL using C or C++. I would challenge you to look around and find ANY stack of software that doesn't have C or C++ in it. It's just a matter of how deep you have to go to find it. Are you saying that we shouldn't equip students to deal with layers of software that deep? Are you saying we shouldn't equip them to understand things like trace compiling, which are the state of the art in language design and implementation? Sure, if all you want to do is web development, you can probably go a long ways without understanding system software. But you'll always be dependent on the people who understand the stack up and down.
- ynniv 17y ago
  > I'm going to take two seconds and run strace on the program ... > I'm going to look at the manpage for open Those are some silly arguments for teaching C. Someone with no understanding of C can just as easily read man pages. While it is useful to know C and assembly for debugging system calls via a debugger, this is rare compared to debugging via reading the documentation. Plenty of people wrote C based applications for the original Macintosh, even though the operating system was originally written in Pascal. > I would challenge you to look around and find ANY stack of software that doesn't have C or C++ in it. It's just a matter of how deep you have to go to find it. Thats a common, but baseless argument for knowing C. Most stacks are indeed written in C, but this is because most operating system interfaces are written in C, and C compilers are widely available and easy to write. Many efficient VM's have a minimal base written in C and transition to their own language early on. Amusingly, the Squeak VM from the original article is one of these. > Are you saying we shouldn't equip them to understand things like trace compiling, which are the state of the art in language design and implementation? Only students who specialize in compilers or virtual machines are going to dig that deep ... but what does that have to do with C? > Sure, if all you want to do is web development, you can probably go a long ways without understanding system software. But you'll always be dependent on the people who understand the stack up and down. That raises a good point - stop reading the web and get out there and till those fields, or you'll always be dependent on others for your basic needs. While you're out there, we'll debate the finer points of a specialized society. I'll just point out that hardware and operating systems are useless without higher level applications. Those writing them are actually always dependent on others to make the combination do something useful.

by ynniv 17y ago

haberman 17y ago

> I'm not purposely trolling here, it is my opinion that C is a poor language to teach students. If you don't teach students C, you're denying them a deep understanding of how all of the higher levels are implemented. If all you know is Python but I know Python, C, UNIX system calls, and even assembly, I'm going to run circles around you, even if we're both working 100% in Python. For example, suppose your Python program says "import foo", but it's not finding module "foo". How can you debug what is happening? I'm going to take two seconds and run strace on the program to see what files the process is trying to open. You're going to... read some docs? Post a question on a message board? Or suppose that your Python program tries to do an open("foobar", "w") but the open fails with: IOError: [Errno 26] Text file busy: 'test' I'm going to look at the manpage for open(2) to figure out what this error means. You're going to... go ask somebody who understands system software? People who don't understand system software are totally helpless compared to people who do. You may see C fading into history. What I see is every single relevant technological innovation -- 2nd-gen JavaScript interpreters, Flash, the JVM, .NET, browsers, OS's -- ALL using C or C++. I would challenge you to look around and find ANY stack of software that doesn't have C or C++ in it. It's just a matter of how deep you have to go to find it. Are you saying that we shouldn't equip students to deal with layers of software that deep? Are you saying we shouldn't equip them to understand things like trace compiling, which are the state of the art in language design and implementation? Sure, if all you want to do is web development, you can probably go a long ways without understanding system software. But you'll always be dependent on the people who understand the stack up and down.

ynniv 17y ago
> I'm going to take two seconds and run strace on the program ... > I'm going to look at the manpage for open Those are some silly arguments for teaching C. Someone with no understanding of C can just as easily read man pages. While it is useful to know C and assembly for debugging system calls via a debugger, this is rare compared to debugging via reading the documentation. Plenty of people wrote C based applications for the original Macintosh, even though the operating system was originally written in Pascal. > I would challenge you to look around and find ANY stack of software that doesn't have C or C++ in it. It's just a matter of how deep you have to go to find it. Thats a common, but baseless argument for knowing C. Most stacks are indeed written in C, but this is because most operating system interfaces are written in C, and C compilers are widely available and easy to write. Many efficient VM's have a minimal base written in C and transition to their own language early on. Amusingly, the Squeak VM from the original article is one of these. > Are you saying we shouldn't equip them to understand things like trace compiling, which are the state of the art in language design and implementation? Only students who specialize in compilers or virtual machines are going to dig that deep ... but what does that have to do with C? > Sure, if all you want to do is web development, you can probably go a long ways without understanding system software. But you'll always be dependent on the people who understand the stack up and down. That raises a good point - stop reading the web and get out there and till those fields, or you'll always be dependent on others for your basic needs. While you're out there, we'll debate the finer points of a specialized society. I'll just point out that hardware and operating systems are useless without higher level applications. Those writing them are actually always dependent on others to make the combination do something useful.