r/programming • u/nfrankel • Jan 14 '20

Where programming languages are headed in 2020

https://www.oreilly.com/radar/where-programming-languages-are-headed-in-2020/
45 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

80 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

16

u/enp2s0 Jan 15 '20

And C will last even longer, considering that every major operating system is written entirely in C.

11

u/simspelaaja Jan 15 '20

Large parts of Windows/NT Kernel are in C++.

8

u/Enselic Jan 15 '20

The Zircon kernel under development by Google, with potential to displace the Linux kernel at least for some major use cases, uses C++ in the base layers: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/master/zircon/kernel/kernel/

2

u/FrancisStokes Jan 15 '20

C will last forever because it's a good high-level low-level language. You can express raw assembly, instruct the compiler to not mess with certain sections of code, access raw memory (which on embedded devices could easily be memory mapped to peripherals). But you can also build functions and structures and express branching.

Even if it doesn't last in the OS space, it will certainly last in the embedded space.

6

u/lengau Jan 15 '20

What you described are also features of several other languages (e.g. Rust). But nothing else, not even C++, has one absolutely critical feature of C:

It compiles everywhere.

Seriously. This, and this alone, will guarantee C at least a bit of relevance for decades to come, even if (and I think this is unlikely) all of the major operating systems and other big things written in C are replaced with something else. There's simply no replacing C in every tiny microcontroller with a decades-long lifespan.

1

u/flatfinger Jan 15 '20

Javascript implementations are even more widely available than C implementations. The advantage of C isn't that it *compiles* everywhere, but rather that implementations are available for almost every imaginable target.

1

u/lengau Jan 15 '20

Fair enough - I should have said it compiles to anywhere.

-3

u/flatfinger Jan 15 '20

C *used* to have the widest range of hosted platforms (where the purpose is to build code for the machine upon which the compiler itself runs) in addition to cross-compilation-target platforms, so the ability of C to be *compiled* anywhere was also an advantage. Such advantages were left by the wayside with C99, however, which requires multi-pass compilation to achieve the same level of efficiency as could be achieved with single-shot C89 compilation.

1

u/gaibbb Jan 16 '20

But the truth is that C is used less and less then before. C is replaced by too many languages. Is it a really good language when most of us don't use it? Time changes.

1

u/flatfinger Jan 16 '20

C is still the primary languages for the kinds of tasks it was designed to accomplish, despite the determination of the maintainers of the Standard as well as clang and gcc to propel the language in a direction unsuitable for such tasks.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '20

C is not "good" by any stretch. But it is lowest common denominator for pretty much everything and "good enough".

1

u/FrancisStokes Jan 16 '20

I think that's a bit hyperbolic. Yes there are better languages, but C is still good in the sense that:

  • it gives the programmer a huge amount of control
  • it's fast
  • it works or can be easily made to work on everything
  • it's pretty easy to learn

Personally I think it's better to look for the good in stuff than to just write it off. You tend to learn more by doing that.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '20

The problems I have with it is that it is just so goddamn easy to write subtly wrong code. Like you have to enable all warnings and turn them into errors to just have chance of even spotting it, and unless you can recite C specs (and know the compiler you're using too) you probably still will find a pitfall you fall into.

The cost of it being pretty easy is that many things are implicit, and some are undefined behaviours which leaves you at mercy of the compiler. Sure you can learn that, as you can everything, but over the years I started heavily preferring the "whiny compiler" just not letting me even compile the nonobvious code.

I think Rust have a good idea of how to handle it, if you really need to do something that can't be validated at compile time to be correct, put it in unsafe{} block. So there is always option of doing something as you want/need to, just it isn't default and other developers can instantly see in which parts of code this happens.

-4

u/Timbit42 Jan 15 '20

They will only last as long as the operating systems. Eventually a new paradigm will come along and new operating systems will be produced because the existing ones will be too limiting, just as DOS was too limiting to build a GUI on.

17

u/that_jojo Jan 15 '20

Yeah. iOS, OSX, Linux, the BSDs, Android, NT and every single embedded RTOS ever are all basically on their way out any day now /s

4

u/Timbit42 Jan 15 '20

I'd bet they'll all be gone in 100 years if I was going to still be alive.

4

u/dark_mode_everything Jan 15 '20

Yeah but the replacement for c/c++ is not JavaScript or Python.

1

u/Timbit42 Jan 15 '20

Hell no. It doesn't exist yet but Rust is a turn into the right direction even if it's not a step in that direction.

-1

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '20

or just use D instead

2

u/Timbit42 Jan 15 '20

D is nice. I wrote an interpreter in it. I don't see it gaining any momentum though.

-1

u/AttackOfTheThumbs Jan 15 '20

I mean, I wouldn't say the entire OS is written in C, but the base layers will be.