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by throwaway17_17 114 days ago
I know this a four day old comment, but based on your post history I think you are probably the best person to ask to be more specific. So, you start out stating “C has its unique advantages”, an assertion I agree with but more for ‘vibes’ than because I can articulate the actual advantages (other than average compilation times). If you see this I would love to hear your list of C’s unique advantages.
1 comments
uecker 106 days ago
My list of advantages:

  - long-term stability: the code I wrote two decades ago is still valuable to me
  - short (!) compilation times: this is a huge productivity boost
  - the language is very explicit: one can see and understand what is going on
  - mature tooling: good compilers and many other tools
  - simplicity and elegance: the language is small and not much I need to remember
  - portability: supported on many different systems
  - performance: C code can be very performance and usually it is without effort
  - lean: there is no bloat anywhere
  - interoperability: it can interoperate with everything
  - no lock-in: it does not lock you into specific frameworks or ways to do things
  - maintained using an open and (relatively) fair process: not controlled by specific companies
  - what needs to be done, can be done: there are never showstoppers
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uecker 106 days ago
I should also talk about disadvantages and which I think are real and which are not, or not serious

  - no abstractions: i think this is completely wrong, one can build great abstractions in C
  - no package manager: IMHO languages should not have packager managers
  - difficult to learn: I think this wrong (but see below)
  - safety: partially true, but there are ways to deal with this effectively (also the advantages of alternatives are exaggerated)
  - out-dated: partially true with respect to the library
  - weird syntax: partially true, but hardly serious
  - not enough investments in tooling: rarely discussed, but I think this a problem (tools are mature, but still a lot could be improved)
  - difficult for beginners: the out-of-the-box experience is bad. one needs to learn how to do stuff in C, find good libraries, etc.
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