Re:Git's list of banned C functions
by ClumsyPilot on Friday March 05, 2021 @09:11AM
(#26357026)
When we talk about a language, we tend to mix together the language itself and it's ecosystem/runtime/tooling. For example C# can be compiled to produce single-megabyte executables, you could concievably use it without a GC, but that's very non-standard tooling with poor support. So practically speaking, C# can't do that for most people for most usecases, even if hypothetically the language could.
So currently the issue is you can't write baremetal stuff in Go, for example the linux kernel or Arduinos. You can't get rid of GC if you have realtime requirements.
GO is 'close enough' to C in many areas like writing server-side code and CLI tools - it's GC pauses are short, even though C could produce an executables in a few KB, rather than an MB, that has no practical relevance in those areas.
Re:Git's list of banned C functions
by kevincox on Friday March 05, 2021 @09:23AM
(#26357148)
I think you are agreeing with me. Go fails to solve some problems that C does, but feels fairly comfortable to C programmers. Therefore it works well for C programmers when solving problems that can be solved by Go.
So currently the issue is you can't write baremetal stuff in Go, for example the linux kernel or Arduinos. You can't get rid of GC if you have realtime requirements.
GO is 'close enough' to C in many areas like writing server-side code and CLI tools - it's GC pauses are short, even though C could produce an executables in a few KB, rather than an MB, that has no practical relevance in those areas.