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by DanWaterworth 4575 days ago
Author here. I completely agree. I wrote this just because I could and because I was going through a phase of writing everything in C. I wouldn't recommend anyone actually try to use it.
3 comments

Just out of curiosity . . .

What followed the phase in which you were writing everything in C?

I got my first job. There's nothing like a dose of the real world to break you out of such phases. However, I still hadn't reached maturity, I just had a complete reversal and started writing everything in Haskell instead.

It's only been recently that I have started sitting down with projects and thinking, which language makes sense here?

> However, I still hadn't reached maturity, I just had a complete reversal and started writing everything in Haskell instead.

I've been through these phases too. But they keep on recurring time after time. I've been writing everything in C, then C++, then Haskell, then back to C and this has been going on for years.

Well at least both Haskell and C have good educational value, so even if it is a bit odd, you're still learning valuable skills.

I've been through these phases too. But they keep on recurring time after time.

Me too. As I get older, though (I'm well past "maturity" ;), I find myself going back to C more and more. I'm not exactly sure why.

I do think, though, that while our discussions of programming languages nearly always revolve around this or that feature making things easier, or more efficient, or more fault-tolerant, or whatever, there's also an element of "intellectual fun" (or something like that).

I won't say I never get aggravated writing C, but I often enjoy the puzzles that emerge. Trying to figure out how to do something in C, trying to visualize what's going on with the memory, creating clever little pointer-machines -- it's just as fun as doing analogous things with Lisp or Haskell (during one's obligatory Lisp and Haskell phases).

Ah, the write everything in C phase. I had a lot of fun during that :D
Indeed...it's quite comforting in a world full of every JS/Python/Lua/Ruby/.NET/etc/etc framework imaginable, leaving C behind has solved web application security problems. Where is my sarcasm tag.

I've gone back to writing most things in C. Including web apps. If you're a crappy programmer, the "new hip" languages might protect you from some classes of issues, but the idea that you're "safer" is deeply, deeply misguided.