The unreasonable effectiveness of C
Linked by MOS6510 on Thu 10th Jan 2013 23:25 UTC
General Development "For years I've tried my damnedest to get away from C. Too simple, too many details to manage, too old and crufty, too low level. I've had intense and torrid love affairs with Java, C++, and Erlang. I've built things I'm proud of with all of them, and yet each has broken my heart. They've made promises they couldn't keep, created cultures that focus on the wrong things, and made devastating tradeoffs that eventually make you suffer painfully. And I keep crawling back to C."
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C will not disappear any time soon
by rom508 on Fri 11th Jan 2013 11:54 UTC
rom508
Member since:
2007-04-20

I am a system software developer and I have been using C for for about a decade now. The reason why I got into C was simple: Unix is developed in C and this is what you tend to use for Unix system software development.

Some people look down on C because it's old and uncool, but just because something is old does not mean it's crap. Many people avoid C because it's not an object oriented programming language, however I think you can use object oriented programming paradigm with C, as long as you are willing to fully understand how it works at the low level. With a bit of effort and discipline, I have been able to use plain C to achieve single inheritance, polymorphism and generics. It takes a bit longer to develop your code compared to Java or C++, but I would argue it makes you a better programmer when you understand the low level implementation.

So despite its age, C is a very flexible and powerful programming language, although I would prefer for Ada to be more ubiquitous.

Reply Score: 2

saso Member since:
2007-04-18

Some people look down on C because it's old and uncool, but just because something is old does not mean it's crap. Many people avoid C because it's not an object oriented programming language, however I think you can use object oriented programming paradigm with C, as long as you are willing to fully understand how it works at the low level. With a bit of effort and discipline, I have been able to use plain C to achieve single inheritance, polymorphism and generics. It takes a bit longer to develop your code compared to Java or C++, but I would argue it makes you a better programmer when you understand the low level implementation.

Exactly my experience as well. But when I break it to the modern wannabe-hipster script kiddies here on OSNews, I get modded down ;) "C doesn't do feature X the cool way, so it's stupid" is the premise here.

Reply Parent Score: 2

f0dder Member since:
2009-08-05

It's fine understanding how the OO features work on a low level. I'm not sure I'd say people *need* to know this to be decent programmers, but I'm personally fond of my background in C and assembly.

But, after learning how to do things at a low level, why would you continue writing code in that tedious and painful way, when there's tools better suited for the job?

Reply Parent Score: 3

rom508 Member since:
2007-04-20

Because it's not tedious and painful, the overhead of manually doing basic OO development in C is not very big. It would be tedious and painful to use C++ instead, because I don't have as much experience with C++.

Reply Parent Score: 1

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