[spion]

I don't think the reactions and comments were meant as an attack on curl, but more as an attacks on C.

Most programmers who attack C have seen the consequences of a memory-unsafe, type-unsafe language dominating systems programming throughout the years. I remember the period during the early 2000s when "buffer overflow exploits" were an entire industry. I also remember the strange allure of C and C++ in beginner programmer circles. The logic goes something like this: "they are powerful languages, all of the big and popular software projects are written in them, so they must be the best". Their next step was to go on to start a new generation of unsafe and vulnerable programs and libraries, and so on.

Now that we have the tools and technology to do better, we should really be making some efforts to push for them. The goal isn't change right now, but starting the process early seems like a good idea.

[wott]

Most programmers who attack C at the moment are frontend web javascripter kids and rust/functional language snobs, who both never used C and keep repeating the same stuff.

You just have to witness the number of "OMG, you did that in C? Wow!" that are posted every time someone posts a basic C program on a forum. There is a whole crowd that thinks C is some arcane stuff only to be used by by magicians, and if you're not a guru it's gonna kill you.

And then you have the Rust people who chime in and point a list of C problems that are in fact C++ problems.

And then you get the "but anyway modern processors do not execute the code you tell them to execute" guys. Sigh...

It goes every time the same way...

[spion]

> Most programmers who attack C at the moment are frontend web javascripter kids and rust/functional language snobs, who both never used C and keep repeating the same stuff.

Having half-baked information on how C sucks is better than having illusions that its somehow awesome. This:

> There is a whole crowd that thinks C is some arcane stuff only to be used by by magicians, and if you're not a guru it's gonna kill you.

is actually a very reasonable starting point when deciding whether to start a substantial new project in C. Well, minus the arcane part - part of C's success can be attributed to how simple it is to learn how to shoot yourself in the foot.

It also means the number of new programmers that are fascinated with / desire to learn C continues to drop; hopefully that will be enough to break the cycle at some point in the (not so near) future.

[eeeficus]

well it's 2017. maybe it's time we get rid of C? :)

[endisukaj]

Lisp is even older than C, should we get rid of that too?