On Wed, 2015-03-04 at 02:02 -0600, T.J. Duchene wrote:

> Yes. I can't speak for others, but I can implement far more cleanly
> designed and reliable solutions using C than other choices. I can
> certainly write "less code" using Python or Perl, but I can do exactly
> the same thing with C by using a library.

The other side of that argument is where I find the language wars end.
K.O., not a technical. Everybody talks about code reuse and objects
almost always enter the conversation around the same time. But there
can be no argument about what code is the most reusable. Write the best
perl code the world has ever seen and it will languish in CPAN, forever
locked to the Perl world. It might become the number one included Perl
module ever, perl programmers might believe you a living deity, but that
is the maximum impact it can ever have. Same for Python, Java, Lua,
etc. And to a great extent, even C++ suffers from the reuse problem,
although the latest tools are finally allowing general purpose libraries
without the old nightmares.

Write a C library that is useful and people will quickly contribute
small wrappers to call it from languages you haven't even heard of
before the patch shows up. Code reuse? libjpeg.so beats the snot out
of every object stack ever theorized by a comp sci prof, Had the
reference implementation been written in the trendy language of the day
it would be forgotten, a C implementation by someone else becoming
standardized or the whole format failing to catch on due to the
difficulty to implement the standard.

The trick seems to be knowing what code is useful enough to justify a C
library and what just needs to work and work today.