this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
13 points (68.6% liked)
C Programming Language
931 readers
22 users here now
Welcome to the C community!
C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.
... When I read commentary about suggestions for where C should go, I often think back and give thanks that it wasn't developed under the advice of a worldwide crowd.
... The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
- irc: #c
🌐 https://en.cppreference.com/w/c
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm not sure you realize you're proving OP's point.
Rewriting projects from scratch by definition represent big step backwards because you're wasting resources to deliver barely working projects that have a fraction of the features that the legacy production code already delivered and reached a stable state.
And you are yet to present a single upside, if there is even one.
You are just showing the world you failed to read the article.
Also, it's telling that you opt to frame the problem as "a project is written in C instead of instead of actually secure and harden existing projects.
This is a flippant statement, honestly, as it disregards the premise of the discussion. It's memory safety. That's the upside. The author even linked to memory safety bugs in OpenSSL. They might still exist elsewhere. (I realize there is a narrow class of memory bugs that C compilers understand, but it's just that, a narrow class). We have scant way of knowing whether or not they exist without significant testing effort that is not likely to happen. And it would be fighting a losing battle anyway, because someone is writing new C code to maintain these legacy systems.
You're completely ignoring even the argument you're supposedly commenting,let alone the point it makes. You're parroting cliches while purposely turning a blind eye to the point made in the blog that yes C can be memory safe. Likewise, Rust also has CVEs due to memory safety bugs. So, beyond these cliches, what exactly are you trying to argue?
Joel's point was about commercial products not programming languages. I'm not the one misunderstanding here. When people talk about using Rust, it's not talking about rewriting every single thing ever written in C/C++. It's about leaving C/C++ behind and moving on to something that doesn't have the issues of the past. This is not about large scale commercial rewrites. It's about C's inability to deal with these problems.
sure thing bud.
I didn't say that and you know it. Also it's quite telling (ooh, I can say the same things you can) that you think "better language" means "pet language". Actually laughable.