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Stop comparing programming languages (programming.dev)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Indeed, I had no idea there are multiple languages referred to as "APL".

I feel like most people defending C++ resort to "people shouldn't use those features that way". 😅

As far as I can tell, pointer arithmetic was not originally part of PASCAL; it's just included as an extension in many implementations, but not all. Delphi, the most common modern dialect, only has optional pointer arithmetic, and only in certain regions of the code, kind of like unsafe in Rust. There are also optional bounds checks in many (possibly most) dialects. And in any case, there are other ways in which C is unsafe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I feel like most people defending C++ resort to “people shouldn’t use those features that way”. 😅

And yeah, I'm with you, that's a shit argument. A language is a tool, it exists to make the task easier. If it makes it harder by leading you into situations that introduce subtle bugs, that's not a good tool. Or at least, worse than an otherwise similar one that wouldn't.

Without a super-detailed knowledge of the history and the alternative languages to go off of, my suspicion is that being unsafe is intrinsic to making a powerful mid-level language. Rust itself doesn't solve the problem exactly, but does control flow analysis to prove memory safety in (restricted cases of) an otherwise unsafe situation. Every other language I'm aware of either has some form of a garbage collector at runtime or potential memory issues.