Comment Re:C Advocacy (Score 3, Offtopic) 221
C is widely used because it allows the programmer to do exactly what he or she wants with (except in a few cases) the ability to be able to predict how the resultant binary will 'look'.
For example, the in-memory layout of a 'struct' is exactly how the programmer decided it should be - with the exception of padding, which has a well-defined behaviour anyway.
Similarly, the same applies to calling conventions, and to a certain extent, the raw machine code that gets generated.
C++, on the other hand, I hate, becuase it doesn't give you this fine-grained control (for example, the in-memory layout of a class containing virtual methods is largely implementation-defined, I believe).
The majority of the 'other' languages (with the exception of those such as Pascal, FORTRAN and COBOL) generally execute within a VM, which as well as letting you do lots of neat stuff (most of which you can do in C with a little bit of effort and a decent dynamic linker API), it also adds a layer of abstraction which means it's difficult to see how corresponds to assembler output. You're constrained by the VM, meaning that if you want to optimise for a particular CPU or architecture, you need to rebuild the compiler/interpreter/whatever and optimise the VM itself.
My two cents.
For example, the in-memory layout of a 'struct' is exactly how the programmer decided it should be - with the exception of padding, which has a well-defined behaviour anyway.
Similarly, the same applies to calling conventions, and to a certain extent, the raw machine code that gets generated.
C++, on the other hand, I hate, becuase it doesn't give you this fine-grained control (for example, the in-memory layout of a class containing virtual methods is largely implementation-defined, I believe).
The majority of the 'other' languages (with the exception of those such as Pascal, FORTRAN and COBOL) generally execute within a VM, which as well as letting you do lots of neat stuff (most of which you can do in C with a little bit of effort and a decent dynamic linker API), it also adds a layer of abstraction which means it's difficult to see how corresponds to assembler output. You're constrained by the VM, meaning that if you want to optimise for a particular CPU or architecture, you need to rebuild the compiler/interpreter/whatever and optimise the VM itself.
My two cents.
