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Author: Didier Kryn
Date:  
To: Jude Nelson, billmoss
CC: dng@lists.dyne.org
New-Topics: [Dng] OT: Programming languages again.
Subject: Re: [Dng] John Goerzen asks, "Has modern Linux lost its way?"





        Hey Guys, I would love to have a dispute about languages, but I
    don't think it's in the scope of this mailing list. Do you? Excuse
    me for having fed it.


        Didier


Le 12/02/2015 21:07, Jude Nelson a
      écrit :



I tend to use C, C with C++ STL containers (I
        hesitate to call it "C++"), and Python pretty regularly.  I'd
        use Python more often if (1) its multi-threading wasn't so
        terrible (GIL, anyone?), (2) the VM did basic static analysis,
        like verifying that I didn't use variable before initializing
        it, and (3) Python 3 was actually backwards-compatible with
        Python 2.



I'm looking forward to seeing how Rust shapes up, once
          Mozilla can get the language stable enough for me to use it
          for serious things.  I like the idea of using the compiler to
          eliminate large classes of error-prone C-isms, like leaking
          memory or accessing memory outside of a buffer.


          -Jude



On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 2:51 PM,
          william moss 
<bill.m.moss@???>
          wrote:

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                On 02/12/2015 01:42 PM, Hendrik Boom wrote:

                > On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 11:25:46AM +0100, Didier
                Kryn wrote:

                > ...

                >>

                >> I have been programming in C

                >> from the beginning of the 80's and loved it,
                but I think C++ is

                >> wrong by design (personal thought), although I
                have no choice but to

                >> use programs written in that language, as well
                as Perl, Python and

                >> Ruby, which I have no opinion about.

                >

                > I share your opinion about C++.  I too used to use
                C, since the

                > mid-seventies.  Except for its abysmal
                identification of array

                > subscripting with pointer arithmetic, it's a very
                clean assembler

                > replacement.

                >

                > C++'s marketing success was to be compatible with
                C.  It no longer is,

                > though.  And C++'s complelxity is too much for me.

                >

                > I occasionally use C++'s objects.  But for the most
                part, I try to

                > write my C code so it indifferently compiles under
                C++ or C.  Yes,

                > if means some #if's.  But C++ statically catches
                some errors that C

                > doesn't.

                >

                > I strongly suspect that most of the code nowadays
                written in C++ could

                > better have been written in Modula 3.  The kind of
                guaranteed instant

                > response you can in principle get without
                garbage-collection pauses are

                > not needed for almost all software.

                >

                > But I'd appreciate a more compact syntax for Modula
                3, while retaining

                > its semantics.

                >

                > -- hendrik

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                > Dng mailing list

                > 
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                >




            C++, originally C with Classes, was a great idea. It added
            Smalltalk

            like abstractions to data and bound data to methods. This is
            long in the

            past and I no longer use C++. C, in its ANSI/POSIX/ISO
            incarnation is

            quite good. Modern C has removed some of its FORTRAN roots
            and fixed

            many of the K&R foibles.


            Pointer arithmetic is what C is all about. The original
            manual and the

            Programmer's Workbench both call it a portable assembler.


            There are no arrays in C, there is a memory region that is
            addressed by

            a reference. Pascal and its derivatives (Modula, Ada) do
            implement real

            arrays as does PL/I.


            For scripts, I use byte code languages (Perl mostly these
            days) with

            some low level modules written in ANSI C. I do however, miss
            using

            FORTH, CLOS and Smalltalk for real applications.


            Most applications that are not critical to latency or 6
            sigma

            predictability are best served with a byte code language.
            This places

            the burden of reliability on the developers of the run time
            (byte code

            machine). That said, I have probably written as much code in
            various

            assembly languages as in C.


            I have been using Unix and its analogs for 37 years,
            computers for

            engineering for 51 years. My first programs were written in
            FORTRAN-4,

            using a model 19 key punch.


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