Programming thread

[Marvin]

what does it have to do with anything? You stated network facing code in C was irresponsible, regardless of how much of it is written in a given year.

Then I'd have to ask you in response: why would the fact that network drivers are written in C mean that it's not irresponsible behavior?

This wasn't my intention when I originally said it, but the market popularity of C for network code might have an indirect relationship with how good of a decision it is, because shitty C code is driving developers away from using it.

And as a volume of code shipped, most of the volume is the result of the compilation of C code.

Kind of a meaningless benchmark, considering how loosely defined "the result of the compilation of C code" can be.

Code use matters more than code writing.

Definitely not. Code written by humans is substantially different than code written by machines.

C is the lingua franca of programming. It's importance cannot be taken lightly. You cannot do serious programming without using it to some extent.

One could argue that C's popularity is a historical accident in some ways and not because of any merit inherent in the language.

There are alternative execution models and languages at every level of abstraction. From bare metal, all the way up to high level stuff. (An example of an interesting low level alternative to C is Forth.)

I mean, C's in place in many areas, and you might as well use it if it fits your use case (and you keep the interaction with humans to a bare minimum). But arguing that C is "good" is not the foregone conclusion many seem to think it is.

And it's not really the lingua franca that you make it out to be. In many situations, it's basically used as a proxy for x86 calling conventions.

 

[Splendid]

The actual lingua franca is Javascript, because everyone eventually has to interact with it.

 

[Stock Image Photographer]

The actual lingua franca is Javascript, because everyone eventually has to interact with it.

>tfw we will never be free from Javascript

 

[Splendid]

>tfw we will never be free from Javascript

There's been some research into replacing it with Python, the best programming language ever made.

 

[DNJACK]

The actual lingua franca is Javascript, because everyone eventually has to interact with it.

A lot of programming areas don't ever use networks, let alone webs. I'll take the point serisouly when financial analyst programmers start using javascript

 

[Splendid]

A lot of programming areas don't ever use networks, let alone webs. I'll take the point serisouly when financial analyst programmers start using javascript

How many financial analysts are using C instead of a DSL?

 

[DNJACK]

They don't use C as the main programming language, but they certainly interact with it for interface with external librairies, unlike javascript.

As such, they have to understand some of it.

 

[Splendid]

They don't use C as the main programming language, but they certainly interact with it for interface with external librairies, unlike javascript.

As such, they have to understand some of it.

By your logic, everyone is an assembler programmer, since that's what C compiles into.

 

[DNJACK]

one, there is no such thing as a generic assembly programmer, assembly is a family of languages, not one.

But the main thing is the vast majority don't write assembly at all, don't look at generated assembly and don't interface with assembly code, so no.

 

[Splendid]

And do you think all those SAS programmers are looking at the underlying C code? No, they're completely unaware of that lower level.

 

[DNJACK]

they seem to say otherwise on their support page:

The SAS/C Compiler and Library provides a versatile C and C++ development environment for IBM®System/390TM mainframes. The features of the compiler and library include full compliance with the ANSI and ISO standards for the C and C++ programming languages and a wealth of library extensions that enable you to fully exploit the power of the System/390TM operating environments. The SAS/C Compiler has proven reliability. It has been in use for over a decade in the demanding development environments of business, industry, education, and government. One indication of the power and flexibility of the SAS/C Compiler is that SAS has relied on it to engineer the SAS System for Information Delivery.

The primary elements of the SAS/C Compiler are the complier, linker, full-screen debugger, and the freely redistributable run-time library.

I'd be surprised they devlopped it for nothing

 

[Splendid]

But the people programming in SAS are overwhelmingly just using SAS libraries, they are not calling into C.
And SAS was just one example. Pretty much all DSL's ultimately run on C or a VM that runs on C, but the programmers are intentionally unaware of any underlying C calls. Look at Java for example, you're intentionally isolated from the C calls that the VM is making.

 

[DNJACK]

it's not about C code called by the infrastructure, it's that the programemrs soemtimes have to use C to interface with things outside the normal ecosystem of librairies. For java it's not C code in the VM, it's the java native interface that makes C so important.

 

[Splendid]

interface with things outside the normal ecosystem of librairies

Dot. Net. Framework.

And this idea isn't even new, VMS had it back in the day and that OS is old as shit. I think several other minicomputer OS's had the same general idea back when those were still popular.
And, and this is important, yes, there has been a big shift away from writing shit like that in C. And to make it clear, I would literally rather write a REST API in PHP to receive calls where performance isn't an issue than write more fucking C.

 

[Raging Capybara]

I've never met a rich programmer in my entire life.

 

[DNJACK]

If you hate C and still had to write it, it just proves my point.

 

[Splendid]

If you hate C and still had to write it, it just proves my point.

I have never written a useful C program in my life, and I have in fact forgotten how to write it. All I could do is guess at what to do given what I've seen of it and my knowledge of other languages in that syntax family.
And yes, I am a professional full time programmer.
C is dead. All hail JIT and interpreters.


Moving on: what do you guys think about OpenVMS? It seems like it would have kicked ass had almost any company but HP bought out DEC.
For those of you who don't know, it allows certain languages to call functions written in other languages as long as the functions follow certain conventions.
Also, instead of modeling files as unlimited streams with a null terminator, files are modeled as a collection of records.

 

[DNJACK]

WTF EOF is usually -1 not NULL

 

[Splendid]

WTF EOF is usually -1 not NULL

My bad, I'm tired and retarded.
But everything else is interesting to me.
I think it's pretty interesting and it's sad that we're in what is essentially a duopoly in terms of OS's when there are so many more ideas and so many more opportunities out there. The sale of VMS to a company that's just going to develop it full time is cool though.

 

[DNJACK]

I have to agree here, both Linux and Windows suck. (and Mac OS too)