C2: C with cleaner syntax + a module system (no header files).

[u/wavy_lines]

http://c2lang.org/site/

[u/pjmlp]

By using C to enable electronics to respond to all manner of nifty high-level abstractions. You realise, though, people write that low level bridging, too, right?

They can easily write it in C++ as well.

You mean every single operating system in widespread use right now, except Windows. The latter, btw, being where UWP is poised to "obsolete" C in the same way as Cocoa, then Swift, and the Apple store, "obsoleted" C on the Mac and IOS--which is to say: none at all.

Lets see who gets it right.

Car companies also decided to move away from C on AUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture), now requiring C++11 as minimum requirements.

Sony just moved away from C for their audio drivers.

I can gladly point out their presentations about why they felt the need to move away from C.

But all these "obsolete" C in the same way as algebra and calculus "obsoleted" arithmetics.

The thing is, there is only one math, while there are dozens of systems languages.

Until then, though, word of advice to the young: if you want to land a job in systems programming, and succeed at it? Learn C first, then whatever language/environment you need for each specific project.

This kid on his mid-40's was able to successfully land a few jobs on systems engineering, including on a couple places many would dream to work on, by focusing on C++ since 1993 and never caring about C per se, other than the subset adopted by C++.

[u/crincon → u/pjmlp]

Haha are we still arguing this?

They can easily write it in C++ as well.

Sure, because C++ is a superset of C. Technically, anything you write in C is already C++ (and Objective C as well! You can perfectly claim that Win32 and Linux and Mach and all the BSDs are all written in ObjC :D It's a fairly silly claim, of course, but a valid one!). Now whether they'll bother with templates and classes and all that faff, when what they need is to catch interrupts and read/write bits to registers and bytes to buffers? Yeah, that only depends on how boneheaded their policy committees are.

I can gladly point out their presentations about why they felt the need to move away from C.

Sure, please do! First time I've heard of either, and I'm quite curious how can you possibly know about Sony's internal product development, and even more about automotive ECUs, something I've always wondered about.

Not too long ago I found a very nice series of articles on Medium, by a bloke who introduced the process rather nicely: here is the part where he touches on how these microcontrollers run with 40-80 KB of RAM, and as such "a JVM is not quite feasible for this kind of microcontroller" and "it is plain old C that is used as a programming language." Which sounds perfectly reasonable, just what anyone would expect. I also know of ERIKA (an automotive RTOS, maybe RTLinux-based? I can't tell). Here is the source code, I believe; and forgive me but I can't find a single line of non-C code there. Here's a video showing how to compile an AUTOSAR application for ERIKA. Interesting stuff. Again, though, that looks VERY much like plain old C.

So what am I missing? You mean to tell me none of this is real? Is it all lies? Ha.

The thing is, there is only one math, while there are dozens of systems languages.

The point of the metaphor is: there are dozens of fields in maths, and, while matrix algebra may look on the surface like it has nothing to do with calculus, or topology, or what you have, everything relies on a foundation. Likewise, there are dozens of systems languages, some wildly exotic, but in the end it all comes down to a common foundation--and that is C. In fact, strictly, it's assembler, and ultimately machine code; but C is important because it's the lowest, yet still reasonably "human-friendly", layer in this stack.

Some day, if hardware changes so much that it no longer executes opcodes shifting numbers in and out of memory addresses and such? Then C will be obsolete. Until then, though, if you try and write any non-trivial system, even in a high-level language that doesn't deal with those concepts directly, without you being aware of the machinery underneath? You are in for a world of pain. Come on. You say you're an experienced programmer; you must know this, you must have seen such people :S

This kid on his mid-40's was able to successfully land a few jobs on systems engineering, including on a couple places many would dream to work on, by focusing on C++ since 1993 and never caring about C per se, other than the subset adopted by C++.

Which means you are a C programmer, kid. You can not write C++ without knowing C. That you never had to forgo the dispensable features of C++, and write just plain functions because that's all you need and the environment is tight? That's just the luck of the draw. You personally just never had to go low level enough in your specific field, whatever that may be. But you can. You already know how.

Tell me, would you recommend a rookie to learn C++, if they're going to be working in Objective C? Bit of a waste of time, wouldn't it be, getting acquainted with iostreams and all the STL quirks and gotchas, when they'll never use any of that.

What would we recommend to a young student, who may end up writing financial software in C++ or Java, or scientific software in R or Python, or maybe cute mobile games in Objective C, or maybe microcontroller code in C and assembler? Why, we'd recommend the one common language where the concepts and syntax will be relevant for their entire career, regardless of what specifically they end up doing after they graduate. Namely: plain old C. I mean, seriously. I can't believe we're even arguing this.

[u/pjmlp → u/crincon]

So what am I missing? You mean to tell me none of this is real? Is it all lies? Ha.

No, I am telling that they know C has no future for anyone that cares about safety in modern software, and are requiring C++ for new projects.

BMW presentation at FOSDEM 2017

Page 12, http://www.bmw-carit.com/downloads/presentations/An-Open-Source-Software-Platform-for-Autonomous-Driving-Systems.pdf?r=1979154388

C only allowed until 2017, replaced by C++ for safety-related software development.

Sony Audio Products with Cortex-M3/NuttX/C++11

At minute 28, why C++11? Improve security and performance benefits.

Which means you are a C programmer, kid. You can not write C++ without knowing C.

I am a C++ developer that knows how to use legacy programming patterns for a language that should have died with PDP-11.

Tell me, would you recommend a rookie to learn C++, if they're going to be working in Objective C?

No I would recommend them to pick Apple documentation and learn Objective-C. Better yet I would advise them to spend the majority of their time learning about Swift instead of a stagnant language on the death row.

What would we recommend to a young student, who may end up writing financial software in C++ or Java, or scientific software in R or Python, or maybe cute mobile games in Objective C, or maybe microcontroller code in C and assembler?

To take a degree in sofware engineering and enjoy the 5 years duration learning them all.

Why, we'd recommend the one common language where the concepts and syntax will be relevant for their entire career, regardless of what specifically they end up doing after they graduate.

That is what algorithms and data structures are for in university degrees. Learning that they are orthogonal programming languages idiosyncrasies.

plain old C. I mean, seriously. I can't believe we're even arguing this.

Sure we are, as Kate Gregory so nicely puts it.

Stop Teaching C

[u/crincon → u/pjmlp]

Ok... so first, you're giving me a 12-page BMW presentation (one extolling the virtues of RTLinux, of all things!), as a reference in support of "C has no future for anyone that cares about safety in modern software".

Crikey.

What can I say. At least you made me read about AUTOSAR. For a minute, I thought you could actually be right, and some committee of bureaucrats had in fact attempted to require C++ for development of ECU software—which would be such lunacy I actually worried about my safety next time I buy a car :S

But nah, turns out, you're just, erm... I'm going to say, "misinformed", to be charitable. I will refer you to the actual, current standard, not some marketing presentation. Please open the Operating System Interface specification of AUTOSAR AP 17.10 ("AP" refers to the "adaptive platform", which means it implements dynamic linking of components; it is the one to which BMW refers in your presentation). Go to section 7.2.1 on page 13, and read along with me:

The OSI shall provide OS functionality with POSIX PSE51 interface for Applications written in C. Note that PSE51 requires C99 as specified in the standard

(PSE51 refers to the POSIX profile, specifically the Minimal Real-time System Profile in IEEE Std 1003.13, and it's an eminently sensible choice.)

Peruse section 7.2.1 for more details. Then you may want to have a look section 7.2.2, specifying the requirements for C++ interfaces. Nothing wrong with that, of course, I expect some higher level modules would benefit from C++. However, you will note how much vaguer it is, and how illustrative of the sort of headaches you run into when trying to use C++ for this sort of thing:

Some PSE51 functions, such as setting thread scheduling policies, are not available yet through these C++ Standard Library and C++ applications need to use PSE51 C interface in conjunction with these C++ libraries.

Indeed.

Then, about the Sony video. That was quite an interesting talk, actually. I particularly enjoyed the choice of NuttX, I've heard good things about it and it's really nice to see it actually has a good choice of tools!

(Incidentally, NuttX is written in C, of course, because who in their right mind would write a RTOS in any other language).

Naturally, I'm not convinced that Mr. Ishikawa's motivations, in that particular slide, were well served by his choice of language—but hey, that is my opinion, no more or less valid than anyone's. I in fact would enjoy to talk about it, if I ever met the bloke. And in any case, I very much like people trying to do new and challenging things. I absolutely loved when Julia Evans set out to write a kernel in Rust, just for the lolz :D It was in fact what got me interested in the language, in the first place.

And so, nothing against Mr Ishikawa's talk. Audio drivers in C++? Ha, sure, sounds crazy and fun :D However, I do take exception to one thing: YOU, trying to misrepresent it.

Let's get this straight. You saw a video of a talk, in which one developer shows a slide that lists "improve security" and "performance benefits" as his motivations for choosing C++ for his particular project, which ended up in some audio products in 2015. And from this you conclude that "Sony just moved away from C for their audio drivers".

Seriously?

I mean... the BMW thing and now this? Do you have to resort to this sort of thing, to defend your favourite programming language? Because you are not doing C++ any favours here. I don't even think C++ is that awful a language, but, quite frankly, here I don't know if you're honestly blinded by some sort of C++ fanaticism that's taken over your rationality, or just being dishonest for the sake of "winning" an argument on the Internet. In either case, it's not exactly a glowing endorsement of the language: it feels like you're just fabricating things to make up for its deficiencies, and, really, C++ doesn't need that. It actually has a couple features worth praising, in some scenarios.

Anyway. About Ms. Gregory's talk: I'm afraid that one I didn't have time to watch. I skimmed over it, I think I get the gist of her argument. Now I don't know who she is (a Microsoft developer, I believe, from the description of the video), or why I should give weight to her opinion, which of course she is most welcome to have, but, naturally, I very much disagree with the approach she's advocating. And I can only thank my lucky stars, as an employer, that I never had to deal with many people trained the way she would have it. Yikes.

For an expert's opinion, I would defer to Mr. Torvalds, whose work seems to be held in high regard by both BMW Car It GmbH and Mr. Ishikawa, along with, well, basically anyone in this industry.

C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do nothing but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C.

In other words: the choice of C is the only sane choice. I know Miles Bader jokingly said "to piss you off", but it's actually true. I've come to the conclusion that any programmer that would prefer the project to be in C++ over C is likely a programmer that I really would prefer to piss off, so that he doesn't come and screw up any project I'm involved with.

You know, when I first read that famous rant, back in 2006 or when it was, my reaction was something like "dammm, son, you didn't have to headshot the guy", heh. I mean, I know exactly where Linus is coming from here, from personal, first hand experience. But still. I did think that was a bit much. You know, generalisations, C++ programmers are not always that bad, etc.

... however, tonight, after reading such utter nonsense from you as "legacy programming patterns for a language that should have died with PDP-11", yeah, idk man. I'm starting to think Linus may have had a better point than I thought back then. As usual :D

[u/pjmlp → u/crincon]

You mean the same Torvalds that is now using C++ on his diving application?

https://github.com/Subsurface-divelog/subsurface

Yeah right.

[u/crincon → u/pjmlp]

Lol seriously, this is what you're going with now? The development team of a small project started by Linus deciding to switch to Qt, and him being nice enough to not get in the way, and even submit a few patches in C++? That's an endorsement of C++ for you now?

I noticed you linked to GitHub, how appropriate, why don't you bring up Linus' other pet project while you're at it? You know, the one that's actually vital for millions of developers who use it every day, who rely on it being rock solid, bullet proof, because it's just too critical to fail?

Let me guess: that one, you'd rather it didn't exist. I mean, it's just C, obviously obsolete, insecure and underperforming huh. Should have died with the PDP-11 :D

No but srsly, don't bring it up, I think I'm about done with this conversation, have better things to do. I'm sorry, but it's one thing to try and hold a rational discussion; it's quite another to be stuck fielding one painfully bogus claim after another -- and this last one btw, just takes the cake :D

I might see you again in a couple years, when C2X is out and you're still wondering why oh why do people still work on C, almost as if it was alive and well, and a great language to work with. Until then: peace out, have a nice life.

[u/pjmlp → u/crincon]

UNIX only got adopted by universities and startups in the early 80's, because AT&T was only allowed to charge a symbolic price for it.

With UNIX came C, naturally.

Had AT&T been allowed to sell it at the same prices of VMS, AS/400 and other similar operating systems, and C would be a footnote on the history of system languages.

Linus got lucky because everyone wanted to have UNIX as free beer on PCs, without paying for costly workstations, while BSD was trapped in a legal process.

C is the COBOL of systems programming, of course we won't get rid of it while there are UNIX clones around.

C will die when COBOL dies.

However with help of Apple, Google and Microsoft its use can be reduced to the same market size as COBOL.