I just saw this tonight - Using the pre-processor to make C look different and do different things than we're used to:

https://bit.ly/2tTFWZj

Full link: https://gist.github.com/shakna-israel/4fd31ee469274aa49f8f9793c3e71163#lets-des troy-c

Nightfox
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I just saw this tonight - Using the pre-processor to make C look
different and do different things than we're used to:

Saw this on reddit! Super curious to check this out.

Frankly, the longer I've been involved (even from an arm's length) at
software development, the more I as a human am terrified of C. Screw it, I don't want all the power it gives you by revealing the entirety of your computer to your code. It may be fractions of a millisecond quicker at times, but I'm happy to use something like node.js at this point and have some security, rails, and memory management built in.

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Re: Re: Let's Destroy C
By: ryan to Nightfox on Fri Jan 31 2020 12:38 am

Frankly, the longer I've been involved (even from an arm's length) at software development, the more I as a human am terrified of C. Screw it, I don't want all the power it gives you by revealing the entirety of your computer to your code. It may be fractions of a millisecond quicker at times, but I'm happy to use something like node.js at this point and have some security, rails, and memory management built in.

I have more experience with C++ than C - But I like C++ as a language (and C too, to an extent). I think the power it gives you is one of its advantages. It doesn't force you into a certain paradigm or to do things a certain way. C++ has features that newer languages don't have (such as multiple inheritance and direct manipulation of pointers). Like any tool, one just needs to know how to use it well. And they do say C++ gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot..

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software development, the more I as a human am terrified of C. Screw it,
I don't want all the power it gives you by revealing the entirety of your computer to your code. It may be fractions of a millisecond quicker at times, but I'm happy to use something like node.js at this point and

The idea that C is a "low level" language is false today. Eric S. Raymond
did a nice series of articles based on "C is not a low level language" in ACM Queue (https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479).

Our computers have not been fast PDP-11s now for quite some time now which is how exploits like Spectre and Meltdown were able to be created.

C is only faster (and as you alluded to, only marginally faster) because it's very lightweight and simple (and matches the emulator that's built in to your computer to make it LOOK like a PDP-11 to most of the software running on it).

Today, you have languages like Go and Julia which can almost match C for speed, but also have things like multi-processing built in (Go) or have Python-like operations (like lists) built in (Julia).

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Frankly, the longer I've been involved (even from an arm's length) at software development, the more I as a human am terrified of C. Screw it,
I don't want all the power it gives you by revealing the entirety of your computer to your code. It may be fractions of a millisecond quicker at times, but I'm happy to use something like node.js at this point and
have some security, rails, and memory management built in.

Long live BASIC!

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