:: Re: [DNG] Why C/C++ ?
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Autor: Didier Kryn
Data:  
Para: dng
Assunto: Re: [DNG] Why C/C++ ?
Le 09/08/2024 à 00:10, karl@??? a écrit :
> Hendrik Boom:
>> On Thu, Aug 08, 2024 at 09:35:50AM -0500, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> ...
>>> Why is C/C++ so absolutely wonderful?
>   C is a really nice language compared to assembler.
>   Though at the time, the assembler of e.g. MC68000 was
>   a little high level lang. inspired with mult. adressing
>   modes.
>
>   As with assembler, you can make the program work with very
>   low memory usage, useful for small microcontrollers.
>
>   In C, you program close to the hardware, unless you happen
>   to have an "interfering" operating system. On the other
>   hand, the OS is probably written in C since it has to be
>   close to the HW. Though, C doesn't work well with processors
>   that don't have 8 bit bytes.
>
>   C is a standard, there is lots of litterture about it as well
>   official ISO standard documents describing it.
>
>   In C the motto is: trust the programmer, the backside of that
>   is the programmer needs to be aware of many strange things,
>   mostly related to "undefined" behaviour and nitty-gritty details.
>   It is somewhat easy to make hard to find mistakes.
>
>   C syntax has inspired other languages, so even if you don't want
>   to use C, you can learn a little C to make it easier to learn
>   other languages.
>
>   C is one of the few remaining compiled languages that remain,
>   most other ones are interpreted or have a "runtime" abstraction,
>   e.g. pascals p-code.
>
>    And as grand prize:
>   C has inspired a semi annual competition to make the most
>   unreadable code in style:
>   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Obfuscated_C_Code_Contest
>
> ///
>
>   I don't know much about C++ good points, except it allows you
>   do things more generally, more object oriented. It so to say,
>   allows you to write "cleaner" code in a more mystified way.
>
>   A bad thing with C++ is that the object files are linker dependant
>   so if you update or change the system linker, you might need to
>   recompile everything. The way around that is to build your program
>   static with as few external references as possible. That is why
>   boost is distributed as a set of header files with no "source" files.
>
> ...
>> It was a breath of fresh air in the 1970's, but by now language
>> technology has advanced a lot since then.
> ...
>
>   Ack, I loved it then (80's), still do.


    Fully agree about C. In addition, a POSIX or near-POSIX programming
environment requires a C runtime library. This library takes in charge,
not only a common API for programmers, but also grants the proper
operation of the various system-calls, such as memory management, thread
synchronization and many other things. The development of such libraries
is such a huge and difficult work that nobody wants to redo it for every
language; therefore all build on top of it and, therefore, have
intrerfaces to the C language. There aren't many of these libraries,
around half a dozen, including those of Android, IOS, and BSD which
aren't used on Linux.

    The problem of C is that it is much more subtle than it looks, and
it contains a lot of pitfalls. There is a new, more secure language,
which has the distinctive feature of having been accepted into the Linux
kernel: Rust, but it is not yet stable.

--     Didier