A critique of "How to C in 2016"

Re:A critique of "How to C in 2016" by nabla9 on Friday January 15, 2016 @06:28AM (#10908567)

Compilers. Compilers for everything.

You can hype your favorite systems language all you want, but if there is no compiler, it wont compile.

>OS and hardware vendors decided to only support C compilers.

If you want your favorite language X to work everywhere C does. Just make X-to-C compiler.

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Re:A critique of "How to C in 2016" by dietrichepp on Friday January 15, 2016 @06:31AM (#10908581)

X-to-C compiler isn't as nice as it could be, because you're writing code for some weird chip and need to twiddle some bits for IO using a macro defined in a header somewhere, and that doesn't play nicely with your pet X-to-C compiler.

Not an ideal situation, for sure, but a real one.

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Re:A critique of "How to C in 2016" by nabla9 on Friday January 15, 2016 @07:11AM (#10908768)

It's possible for translator understand headers and macros and generate bindings for them. Even for function macros. For example, GNAT has macro binding although it's not complete.

Btw. There is nothing "pet" in X to C translators. You pay good money for a good Ada to C compiler.

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Re:A critique of "How to C in 2016" by Roboprog on Friday January 15, 2016 @12:08PM (#10910552)

Or an RPG II to C translator/compiler :-)

A job I had in the early 90s, maintaining and extending such...

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Re:A critique of "How to C in 2016" by pjmlp on Friday January 15, 2016 @07:11AM (#10908766)

Of course, but that is an issue of implementation availability not language quality.

I remember the days when using C meant getting an account to the university (or work) UNIX system.

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