this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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Programmer Humor

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Stop comparing programming languages

  • Python is versatile
  • JavaScript is powerful
  • Ruby is elegant
  • C is essential
  • C++
  • Java is robust
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (19 children)

What is C essential for anymore these days? Genuine question btw.

I thought C++ was essential for microprocessor control, but that it depends and sometimes I gather people use C instead, but not always.

Use the language that the company hires you to know:-).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

This is a really good post about why C is so difficult to seriously consider replacing, or even to avoid by using a different language for certain projects: https://faultlore.com/blah/c-isnt-a-language/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It isn't just a language, but it is a language - as it eventually gets around to saying, but it starts off by saying that it isn't, then later corrects itself to say that it is, etc. I feel like the focus of this ignores the historical context of what C was written to be for - at the time there was like Assembly, BASIC, Fortran (?), other long-dead languages like was it A and/or A* or whatever, there was a B language too! (developed by Bell Labs, if Google can be trusted these days), etc. - and C was developed to be better than those. So saying that like it lacks type conversions is very much missing the point - those were not invented yet. A lawn mower also lacks those, but it's okay bc it doesn't need them:-) I am probably nit-picking far too many points, I suppose to illustrate that the style of the article became a hindrance to me to read it b/c of those reasons. But thank you for sharing regardless.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't really like the title either, but the article does demonstrate how unfortunate it is that we're effectively locked in to using the ABI at some level of nearly every piece of software.

That said, there definitely were languages with better type systems prior to the invention of C. Pascal is a frequently-cited example.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Oh wow, good points!:-)

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