Comment Re:Flash Player is 32-bit (Score 1) 89
Flash has had 64-bit versions for all Windows, OS X and Linux since version 11 from 2011.
Flash has had 64-bit versions for all Windows, OS X and Linux since version 11 from 2011.
No, I think C is a great langauge. It has its flaws but no langauge is perfect and the ones that claim to be are extremely niche or long since dead.
Now that parallel computing has started to take central stage, you're forced to deal with the abstract modeling problem.
Nah, already been solved by things like OpenMP. It's cross-platform, cross-vendor, etc.
Yes but knowing about that would require the GP and his ilk to get better talking points. Most of them have never used C or C++ and are merely parroting random crap they hear from other people who have also likely never used them either. C and C++ are anything but perfect, but for a number of domains/platforms they are basically they best you're going to get unless you want to dive into a usually shitty, proprietary vendor language or assembly.
Hubris is always funny. These are the same people who will write Javascript code that has XSS flaws or will write database interfacing code that is subject to SQL injection attacks while at the same time talking about how secure, memory-safe, etc. the language they use is.
There are many fallacies your post builds on, all stemming from the original premise that UNIX was built using C, which already laid down the groundwork for its popularization, leading to C++.
You ascribe something to me that I never stated. Of course UNIX was not built using C. C was created in order to make Unix portable. The only thing fallacious is your strawman.
Java and C# are in the same venue as C and C++.
+5 funny. If they are in the same venue please show me you running Java or C# on an Amtel ATTiny. I won't hold my breath.
Obviously you are not going to invest time in researching better ways when you have a hammer and some nails to do it right away. Humans do with what gets the job done there and then, and the more who use the same tools, the more you can copy and learn from others, even if it's not the optimal way.
+5 funny. Half my job is programming in C# so you would be wrong again.
C and C++ are still very close to how assembly language is translated to machine code. It's 99% a 1:1 relationship in how the code is organized in source to how it is organized in code.
LOL. That hasn't been true for decades. C and C++ translate horribly to modern vector assembly language instructions. Even the best of vectorizing compilers are laughably bad. If what you said was true Intel and others wouldn't be constantly reinventing extensions to C to allow better vectorizing of the code.
C could have been far better at what it does, if it had acknowledge it was just another form of of assembly language. As for C++, you have to become a compiler to fully understand the language, or risk writing code you can't predict the behavior of.
C would be far better if lots of things were changed about it. C is a very flawed language, but it's still the best portable language around.
Even if you don't like Forth (which is arguably vastly superior in the tiniest applications)
I don't dislike it. It's still less portable and powerful.
why should Oberon be "far less useable" than C? A technical argument, please.
That was my bad. I confused the language. It's usability would be limited by its platform support which is smaller than C.
With the exception of Forth.
Not a systems language so far less usable than C.
Or Oberon. Oops, there. I said
Same problem as above.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Tektronix oscilloscopes still running embedded Smalltalk these days?
They might but still has the same limitations as the above and is even more niche.
I should amend my previous statement to say does not have the same portability and capabilities as C. I would dispute that they're as portable as C (I would love to be proven wrong on this), but even if I did except that they are far less capable than C.
I was speaking of RAM of course.
The Alto had at minimum 128 KB so it's not even remotely analogous. Even the most constrained Java ME profile requires 8KB just for itself.
Well I'd be pretty pissed as well if my pet language was relegated to the graveyard of obscurity by a language that was usable for real work. Dennis Ritchie was a pragmatist who got shit done not some guy wanking over the greatness and purity of the language he created. People to this day are still jealous of that.
The problem is that most programmers have never had to get their hands dirty doing embedded work. They live in a bubble that ignores all the memory/storage/processing-power constrained devices all around them. OpenSSL, for example, as used in something like DD-WRT would be unusable if it was written in anything but C or possibly C++.
But the entire world runs x86 with gigs of RAM and terabytes of storage!! How dare you being reality into this!
C became popular because it was vastly more portable and performant than its predecessors. It still is today. None of those "better" languages that came before it or after it can beat that. And yes, extreme portability does matter when you have 100s of millions if not billions of devices that can't run anything but assembly or C. It's why the people saying that OpenSSL should be written in Java or C# are morons. Care to tell me how that's going to run on a, for example, Linksys WRT54G with only 8 or 16 MB of RAM, 2 to 4 MB of Flash storage and a 125 to 240 mhz MIPS CPU? Yeah, it's not.
Unfortunately for those languages, the entire world does not run x86 or other workstation-class or better CPU. Which one of those will run on, for example, the hundreds of millions of 16-bit microcontrollers in wide use? Or MIPS chips in memory-constrained devices like consumer routers? For those requirements, the only usable portable language is C.
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
