this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
666 points (92.9% liked)

Programmer Humor

18267 readers
653 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Stop comparing programming languages

  • Python is versatile
  • JavaScript is powerful
  • Ruby is elegant
  • C is essential
  • C++
  • Java is robust
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

This is a really good post about why C is so difficult to seriously consider replacing, or even to avoid by using a different language for certain projects: https://faultlore.com/blah/c-isnt-a-language/

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

It isn't just a language, but it is a language - as it eventually gets around to saying, but it starts off by saying that it isn't, then later corrects itself to say that it is, etc. I feel like the focus of this ignores the historical context of what C was written to be for - at the time there was like Assembly, BASIC, Fortran (?), other long-dead languages like was it A and/or A* or whatever, there was a B language too! (developed by Bell Labs, if Google can be trusted these days), etc. - and C was developed to be better than those. So saying that like it lacks type conversions is very much missing the point - those were not invented yet. A lawn mower also lacks those, but it's okay bc it doesn't need them:-) I am probably nit-picking far too many points, I suppose to illustrate that the style of the article became a hindrance to me to read it b/c of those reasons. But thank you for sharing regardless.

[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't really like the title either, but the article does demonstrate how unfortunate it is that we're effectively locked in to using the ABI at some level of nearly every piece of software.

That said, there definitely were languages with better type systems prior to the invention of C. Pascal is a frequently-cited example.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 1 points 2 weeks ago

Oh wow, good points!:-)