[rumanator]

C has been "losing ground" not because of random per peeves of those who never wrote a line of code in C but because since C's last standard update there have been other programming languages that offer developers something of value so that the trade-off between using C or any alternative starts to make technical sense.

It also helps that C's standardization proceeds in ways that feel somewhat between sabotage and utter neglect.

Meanwhile, C is still the absolute best binary interop language devised by mankind.

[ratww]

> C has been "losing ground" not because of random per peeves of those who never wrote a line of code in C

This is not a random pet peeve, and WalterBright is as far as you can get from someone "who never wrote a line of code in C". This is the cause of numerous security bugs in the past and currently, and the reason most C material written in the 70s/80s is unsafe to be used today (mostly due to usage of strlen/etc vs strnlen/etc).

[WalterBright]

Frankly I never would have made the proposal if I didn't love C. I've made proposals to add D features to C++, too.

[ratww]

A question: since your company also makes a C/C++ compiler (and the repo has very :), have you considered adding this addition to it, as an experimental feature, perhaps to demonstrate its usefulness to other developers and standard bodies? (Although, now that I think of it, D itself might serve the same purpose)

[WalterBright]

I don't see much point in it. I've proposed this change to C in front of several audiences, and it never received any traction. If you want to experiment with it, you can use DasBetterC, i.e. running the D compiler with the `-betterC` switch, which enables programs to be built requiring only the C Standard Library.

Fair warning - once you get accustomed to DasBetterC, you're not likely to want to go back to C :-)

[ratww]

> If you want to experiment with it, you can use DasBetterC, i.e. running the D compiler with the `-betterC`

I've been meaning to experiment with DasBetterC for a while, and I have a project C I've been wanting to migrate to something with proper strings (it's an converter for some binary file formats, but now I want it to import some obscure text formats too). Maybe that's the push I needed :)

After 20 minutes and about 250 out of 2098 lines converted, the error messages are very good and give very nice hints about what to change, I must say I prefer them to Rust's verbose messages.

[WalterBright]

Great!

DasBetterC's trial-by-fire was when I used it to convert DMD's backend from C to D.

I'm sure you already know this, but the trick to translating is to resist the urge to refactor and fix bugs while you're at it. Convert files one at a time, and after each run the test suite.

Only after it's all converted and passing the test suite can refactoring and bug fixing be considered.

[zestyping]

I don't get why it hasn't gotten traction. When I read it, it was immediately obvious to me that this would be extremely helpful. I want it yesterday, and so should everyone.

[boring_twenties]

Pro tip: Google the name of the person before responding to them, it can help avoid the taste of foot in your mouth which you are currently experiencing.

[msla]

> Google the name of the person before responding to them

Is it a rule at HN that you can't take someone else's name? Otherwise, there's no guarantee that you're talking to the "Real" Walter Bright...

... or that you're talking to that Walter Bright, come to think of it.

[WalterBright]

There can be only one.

[msla]

But The One doesn't get the username.

[sam_lynx]

I’m new here, so this seems like a valid criticism to me — but judging by the number of downvotes, it may not be. Can someone explain why this comment is incorrect?

[Stratoscope]

Perhaps because so many of know Walter from his work and his history here on HN? Sometimes you have to just trust that someone is who we all say they are.

[sam_lynx]

Cool, thanks for the explanation.

[fomine3]

It's fair argument but I also check karma point is high so it looks like legitimate account name in this case.

[datman347]

Anyone that has to rely on their name for an argument isn't worth listening to.

[kortilla]

You misunderstand what the conversation is that’s occurring. The parent implied the person had never written C.

[datman347]

He never said explicitly, he was just making a general statement. Not that it matters whether he did or didn't, there's a lot of things wrong with C, it will most likely eventually disappear, but not for reasons outlined in this article. That's what he was saying.

[sam_lynx]

Well, he dismissed Bright’s argument as a random pet peeve from people who haven’t written a line of code in C before, so yes, I do think he said it explicitly.

[genocidicbunny]

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

This is one of HN's comment guidelines. If you're not sure that someone is who you think they are, you can just ask, e.g.: "Hey, are you Walter Bright who did X and Y?"

[leptons]

Someone once said COBOL would disappear.

C will still be used long after you and I and everyone here have returned to dust.

[xmprt]

Try becoming a COBOL developer and see how that works for you. Likening C to COBOL isn't doing it any favors.

[jcelerier]

> C will still be used long after you and I and everyone here have returned to dust.

there are also people still riding horses. does not make it relevant in any way.

[shakow]

> Meanwhile, C is still the absolute best binary interop language devised by mankind.

You're mistaking the “C” ABI with the C language. The so-called C ABI should actually be called the UNIX-derived ABI, as (i) C doesn't define an ABI and (ii) C can perfectly produce binaries using another ABI (such as e.g. the “Pascal” one, common on the DOS platform).

[asveikau]

Maybe people are voting this down because they think it's directed at Walter Bright in particular, but I think there is actually some truth in the harsh comment.

Nothing about Walter Bright in this statement, but some of the harshest criticisms from others I have seen of C are not from expert practitioners in C.

People who are experts and also critics seem to have a more practical, realistic, nuanced critique, that understands history and challenges to adoption, admits that the long history and difficulty of replacing C isn't exactly for no reason.

[Gibbon1]

That's the way I interpreted it because it's true. A lot of the criticisms are misdirected one by people that haven't used C except being forced to use it for few assignments in school, C++ jockeys that think C is the 30 year out of date version of C that's supported by C++, and people that haven't used it at all for anything real.

I also agree that what the standard committee has been doing for the last 20 years amounts to willful sabotage.

[pjmlp]

So what the improvements between C89 and C18 in regards to UB and security, for any ISO C compliant compiler?

[asveikau]

Between c89 and c18 is close to 30 years.

What about between c99 and c18? Is there anything you can think of? I think the _s() functions, advertised as security features, are a weak effort. Anything else come to mind?

[pjmlp]

Nothing really, if anything VLAs have proven such a mistake that Google lead an effort to remove all instances of VLA use out of the Linux kernel.

Also the amount of UB descriptions just increased and are now well over 200.

Annex K was badly managed, a weak effort as you say, given that pointer and size were still handled separately, and in the end instead of coming up with a better design with struct based handles, like sds, everything was dropped.

ISO C drafts are freely available, I recommend everyone that thinks that they know C out of some book, or have only read K&R book, to actually read them.

[will4274]

> some of the harshest criticisms from others I have seen of C are not from expert practitioners in C.

But were they expert practitioners of C in the past? My experience is that most of the harshest criticisms of C come from former C experts who moved on to other languages because it became clear to them that C would never be fixed - Walter Bright included.

[WalterBright]

I also have extensive (20 years) experience with the solution I proposed.

[asveikau]

Yes I know, and for clarity I appreciate your work and insight, and frequently enjoy your comments here.

My point was that people were mistaking the comment for an attack on you, which I don't think was necessarily intended or needs to be without it being a valid point about a different set of critics.

[chromatin]

Lol at “never wrote a line of code in C”. Surely you are not addressing the article’s author?