C isn’t for your average unicycle riding “developer,” that needs protecting from their own shadow for sure.
Which sadly seems to be the vast majority under the age of 40.
I don’t think there’s a reason to make it about ageism, C is dangerous in the hands of everyone who’s ever used it in real world projects regardless of their expertise. The language makes it very easy to trip over well known and even well understood bugs. And while some people may pretend that they know better, experienced developers know that as projects become arbitrarily large our brains become overloaded, we loose focus, and trivial bugs become increasingly likely. It doesn’t matter if it’s open source, it doesn’t matter if it’s proprietary, bugs that a compiler isn’t protecting us against have always and will continue to crop up in real world projects.
The motivation for safe languages is not because developers under 40 are unqualified or stupid, but because computers are just so much better at following rules consistently than humans are. Safe languages are the answer to the most common types of software corruption. That said, it’s extremely tough to shift the industry’s momentum. C’s first mover advantages have lead to it becoming a ubiquitous defacto standard for system development.
There was an era when developers coded in assembly, hardcore style…
Knowing how the whole toolchain worked and behaved was a prerequisite.
Now it’s all about “reactive” frameworks and visual coding using “nodes”.”
I actually enjoy coding in assembly language. I’ve written TSRs, bootloaders, OS kernels, a bit with microcontrollers, etc, but for the most part it’s an obsolete skill.
Depressing isn’t it?
I look forward to charging 20 grand a day in my retirement for fixing “legacy” stuff the self-identified “developers” can’t understand though. Lol
Sounds like you have it good. I’ve been maintaining legacy code for decades and don’t make anything like that even in a month. You must be working for much wealthier clients. Around here offshoring has gotten out of hand. One of the big insurance companies I worked for laid off nearly the entire domestic IT workforce, people with real experience and who were trustworthy, and moved it all overseas to cut down employee salaries. Sadly it’s a scenario I’ve witnessed several companies go through and it’s come at a huge sacrifice of quality, but by and large these companies don’t care. The way they see it IT just has to be “good enough” and cutting IT expenses increases profit, which is all that matters to the business suits.
“Sounds like you have it good. I’ve been maintaining legacy code for decades and don’t make anything like that even in a month. ”
Neither do I, but when they come begging because no one understands the code base I like to think we’ll be able to set our price a tad higher than normal rates. 😉
…. What did you expect”(tm) when we learn kids to develop using Scratch ?
Don’t knock Scratch too much. Just completed a Lego self balancing robot (like a Segway) with my kid using a PID algorithm in MakeBlock (basically Scratch). All about the algorithm and nothing about the syntax. It’s the right sequence to learn to code.
I’m not one for conspiracy theories or superstition but it does sound a bit 1% doesn’t it? Couldn’t they pick a more consumer friendly name?
You are very generous in thinking that your average consumer would even have the mental capacity to make the link to V for Vendetta.
I’m far less kind to neurotypicals. 😉
Link to the OS is missing.
https://github.com/vlang/vinix
The V language looks very interesting indeed. Go without GC basically. All the other features are just gravy.
I taught myself Go recently by writing an old school demoscene intro. I think I’ll be porting it to V at some point now.
To me it’s an evolved C, with ideas from Jancy. The compilation speed seems interesting.
I think of Go as “C with training wheels”. 🙂
Maybe, but I don’t see it as a pejorative term, more like a cumbersomeness remover.
Because C is far from being free from pitfalls.
And don’t even mention C++.
C isn’t for your average unicycle riding “developer,” that needs protecting from their own shadow for sure.
Which sadly seems to be the vast majority under the age of 40.
“What did you expect”(tm) when we learn kids to develop using Scratch ?
There was an era when developers coded in assembly, hardcore style…
Knowing how the whole toolchain worked and behaved was a prerequisite.
Now it’s all about “reactive” frameworks and visual coding using “nodes”.
““What did you expect”(tm) when we learn kids to develop using Scratch ?
There was an era when developers coded in assembly, hardcore style…
Knowing how the whole toolchain worked and behaved was a prerequisite.
Now it’s all about “reactive” frameworks and visual coding using “nodes”.”
—-
Depressing isn’t it?
I look forward to charging 20 grand a day in my retirement for fixing “legacy” stuff the self-identified “developers” can’t understand though. Lol
Zayn,
I don’t think there’s a reason to make it about ageism, C is dangerous in the hands of everyone who’s ever used it in real world projects regardless of their expertise. The language makes it very easy to trip over well known and even well understood bugs. And while some people may pretend that they know better, experienced developers know that as projects become arbitrarily large our brains become overloaded, we loose focus, and trivial bugs become increasingly likely. It doesn’t matter if it’s open source, it doesn’t matter if it’s proprietary, bugs that a compiler isn’t protecting us against have always and will continue to crop up in real world projects.
The motivation for safe languages is not because developers under 40 are unqualified or stupid, but because computers are just so much better at following rules consistently than humans are. Safe languages are the answer to the most common types of software corruption. That said, it’s extremely tough to shift the industry’s momentum. C’s first mover advantages have lead to it becoming a ubiquitous defacto standard for system development.
Zayn,
I actually enjoy coding in assembly language. I’ve written TSRs, bootloaders, OS kernels, a bit with microcontrollers, etc, but for the most part it’s an obsolete skill.
Sounds like you have it good. I’ve been maintaining legacy code for decades and don’t make anything like that even in a month. You must be working for much wealthier clients. Around here offshoring has gotten out of hand. One of the big insurance companies I worked for laid off nearly the entire domestic IT workforce, people with real experience and who were trustworthy, and moved it all overseas to cut down employee salaries. Sadly it’s a scenario I’ve witnessed several companies go through and it’s come at a huge sacrifice of quality, but by and large these companies don’t care. The way they see it IT just has to be “good enough” and cutting IT expenses increases profit, which is all that matters to the business suits.
@Alfman
“Sounds like you have it good. I’ve been maintaining legacy code for decades and don’t make anything like that even in a month. ”
Neither do I, but when they come begging because no one understands the code base I like to think we’ll be able to set our price a tad higher than normal rates. 😉
…. What did you expect”(tm) when we learn kids to develop using Scratch ?
Don’t knock Scratch too much. Just completed a Lego self balancing robot (like a Segway) with my kid using a PID algorithm in MakeBlock (basically Scratch). All about the algorithm and nothing about the syntax. It’s the right sequence to learn to code.
@Iapx432 : yeah, I know, you can do it in Labview too. But try doing an OS in Scratch…
Go is BASIC with C-syntax
That kind of pejorative language has no place in any company I would ever work at or any project I would contribute towards. That is a toxic red flag.
Please elaborate.
I have never seen a OS project where the first proud screen shot was a kernel panic. Interesting.
You never followed OSFree then.
Looks like a pretty cool project! I’ll definitely be following its progress 🙂
I’m also super curious about V. It’s the first time I’ve heard of it..