Shlomi Fish has written a new essay titled "When C is the Best? (Tool for the Job)". Its theme is giving several reasons (besides high speed and low memory consumption) why some code should still be written in C.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-07
Illusion ? It is the most portable language (of course, by portability we mean source code portability).
It's portable as long as your program only does portable things, like text processing and math.
However, C is a portability nightmare when it comes to things like networking, graphics, and several other things. Additionally, people talk about C like there's only one version of it. There are in fact several, the most popular of which are K&R, ANSI C 89, ANSI C 99, and GNU C. Yes, GNU C does add its own extensions, and yes programmers do use them. (It is possible to have vendor lock-in in open source, it just isn't as big of a problem when it happens.)
C is also unportable during the act of compiling and linking. There are several different C compilers that use different command line options. Commonly used C libraries can be placed in any number of locations and given any number of names on people's computers. That's why we have the mess that is the GNU autotools.
Member since:
Member since:"Most portable language"?!? You know how easy it is to get endianess wrong or to use non-portable libraries in C (yes that's source compatibility even)? Now compare that to java or c#, or look at all the apps for ms-windows that can't/won't be ported to linux/unix and then look at all the java apps that run out of the box on linux, macos/x and windows.
Member since:Code portability with C means to the same compiler on a different platform. C Compiler compatibility is a different matter. Each compiler seems to have its own features and quirks which can cause the same C code to behave differently depending on which compiler it was compiled with (assuming it will compile the foreign code at all). And then of course there are platform dependencies in the actual code which are hard to avoid because nothing shields you from the system specific hardware and system specific libraries except programmer discipline.
Java has the advantage of a well specified language (unlike C), well specified run-time environment (unlike C) and well specified APIs (unlike C). The behavior of Java programs on different implementations of the run-time engine and compiled with different versions of the compiler against different implementations of APIs is well defined: anything deviating from the spec may be considered a bug. So you can can compile with the ibm compiler on AIX and test on webshpere, run on the sun jvm on solaris and jboss or use Jrockit to run it on win32 with bea weblogic. If any of this requires code changes you have encountered a bug in either the compiler, run-time environment or the API implementation. The before mentioned application servers are known to have interoperability issues due to different implementations of the huge amount of APIs they support.
Hopefully you'll understand that source portability is probably pretty damn close to perfect. Most of the portability problems of java programs from one platform to another are caused by api portability problems. For example the oracle implementation of the servlet API is on paper equivalent to the apache tomcat implentation. Indeed many applications that use this API run fine on both, but not all. The reason is that oracle did nog quite get all the semantic details right in their implementation. If you depend on the correct behavior of some of these things, you will encounter problems.
The problem isn't any different if you compare the SUN linux jvm and the win32 jvm. Indeed most of the java code of the library is identical for both platforms (no problems there). The native code it depends on however is not. A considerable part of the java API has been designed to cover up for native code portability issues (graphics, io, processes & threads). Sometimes it fails to do that properly and that's when you encounter problems porting java applications from win32 to linux or vice versa.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
"In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies.
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing."The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run."There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Member since:
2005-08-08
> This to my mind is one of C's greatest weaknesses - this illusion of portability.
Illusion ? It is the most portable language (of course, by portability we mean source code portability).