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I had spent 50 minutes or so writing a reply to this Thursday morning, and was nearly finished when I must’ve accidentally hit F5 or something and lost it all. It went more or less like this:

> Great summary.

Thanks!

> Not sure if by ’disagree with this’ you mean the whole piece, or just the quoted sentence.

Just the quoted sentence, though it does make two assertions: 1) that C is necessary for low-level programming; and 2) that higher-level languages are necessary for all other applications. My previous comment focused primarily on the first one, but I disagree with both. One only need look at the sheer number of applications written in C [1] to see that C is suitable for applications outside of the “low-level” realm.

> I especially like your point about the programmers migrating to systems programming having a different mindset than an older person like me, who started with assembly.

We’re in a similar boat, I think. I cut my teeth on QuickBASIC, quickly picking up some 8086 assembly to get some fancy-schmancy VGA graphics and some SoundBlaster goodness. After around two years, I got my hands on Turbo C 2.0 and never looked back. Although I now prefer higher-level languages, I’m a systems programmer at heart, and that affects how I approach the art and the act of programming. I have a hunch that many programmers “suffer” from the same affliction: that however they learned the ropes still affects their approach to programming in some way; and that’s the thought that underlies my suspicion that we’re about to see a “systems programming renaissance” of sorts.

> Don’t get me wrong, I like C.

Don’t get me wrong, either. I also like C. But it’s also just not a good language. Even at the systems level, there are so many better alternatives. I don’t know if it’s familiarity (most of the lines of code I write are in C), nostalgia (C was one of the first languages I learned), laziness (C’s ubiquity makes it pretty convenient), tradition (these days I’m a UNIX™ guy through-and-through), some combination, or something else entirely. I’ve also noticed that many C programmers have an attitude of “if you don’t know all the ins-and-outs, nuances, footguns, hazards, dark corners, unspecified and implementation-dependent behaviors, and compiler optimizations, then you’re stupid and a bad programmer and you should feel bad” — so maybe it’s narcissistic elitism…

> I am currently writing a Lisp in C, …

Care to elaborate? Is it a naïve interpreter, bytecode compiler & VM, native code compiler, …? Is it an existing dialect or one of your own design? Is there anything about it that you feel is distinctive? Anything you feel particularly proud of?

I’m working on a Lisp of my own, too. It’s based primarily on EuLisp, but with some influences from Scheme, Common Lisp, and some older Lisps like Le-Lisp. I’m still in the design process, though, and am not ready to talk about it at length yet.

> I certainly would choose C over Java any day, or move to another higher-level language. I think Java's VM is a fantastic piece of work, and Java syntax is very C-like, but I'd rather not use it.

I’d originally written a rather lengthy response to this, going over various shortcomings of Java and various trade-offs involved in making that decision, and cases where Java might be a good choice, but honestly I don’t feel like reproducing it now. I don’t care enough for Java to defend it, really.

> I use a lot of programs written it though!

Of course! It’d be silly to say “X does exactly what I want/need, but it’s written in language Y, and I don’t like Y, so I refuse to use X”, though sadly I do know some people who say such things. It baffles me. What an idiotic attitude.

> I prefer Lisp/Scheme, and compiled SBCL is fast.

As do I. I’m a smug Lisp weenie and proud! In fact, up until recently, I would’ve told you that Scheme is my favorite programming language, followed by ML. Then, being disenchanted with the current state of Scheme — the divisive and controversial standards, the inability of the community to unite behind the language — and my “discovery” of EuLisp have lead me to say that my favorite programming language is my own breed of Lisp. I took a couple days of vacation from work, and I’d planned to spend them working on my Lisp, but…

> And now with the opensourcing of Chez Scheme, I will be busy this next week.

Me too. I completely changed my vacation plans when I saw this announcement. I’ve spent some time, and will continue to spend time, playing Chez and studying the source :)

> The Spring 2016 Lisp Game Jam is starting in about 24 hours….

I hadn’t heard about this. Thanks!

P.S. Hit me up sometime if you want to talk about Lisp or programming languages in general. I’m definitely a PL nerd, and I like to talk about this stuff (including implementation strategies and history). My e-mail address is in my profile.

[1] https://github.com/search?q=language%3Ac

Besides the obvious low-level stuff, like the Linux kernel, there are quite a few applications that don’t require the low-level offerings of C: git, redis, the-silver-searcher, awesomeWM, etc.