> C programming language will be 50 years old next year.

This principle implies the C programming language will outlive Rust, Go, Python, etc. I'm not sure how I feel about that. There's a good chance its right, but I'm uncomfortable imagining my grandchildren learning C's weird quirks.

There's definitely codebases written in C today which will outlive me, like the Linux kernel. And most of those codebases will probably never migrate to a different language.

I think C will outlive those languages, in the sense that it will exist. But it doesn't necessarily follow that your grandchildren will have to learn it. There will be some other language like JS or foobar 2050 that's just way more relevant and popular :) But they certainly COULD if they wanted to.

The question of whether a technology simply exists vs. whether it retains its popularity is an interesting one. Chairs and forks will both exist and be popular. iPhones will exist, but they won't be popular on some time scale. So it is interesting to think whether C is closer to one or the other :)

C is the "lawn chair" of programming languages. Sure, it is neither particularly fancy, nor most comfortable - but beats having no chair :)

While C is not perfect, it is in a sense something that most other programming languages are not. It's simple and if you program in C you probably touch upon the entirety of the language on a regular basis. Because it is simple you can write a compiler for it with some reasonable effort if need be, even for completely new architectures.

In any case, I'd argue that most of the quirks are due to undefined behaviour as implemented in the compilers. And 50 years from now the language have probably evolved some more anyway.

I'm more worried my grandchildren will still be learning/using QWERTY than they have to learn C's weird quirks :). My opinion is that it's easier to get a group of tech people together and gradually replace C (like Android Rust development) than getting people to replace QWERTY or getting the US to move to Metrics system.

what's wrong with qwerty?

Arguments could be made that it's inefficient or un-ergonomic, though I'm doubtful how much difference it makes on a modern keyboard. There's an oft-repeated story about the qwerty layout being designed to keep people from typing fast enough to jam typewriters. I can't speak to the legitimacy of the story, but I do collect typewriters and I can say for sure that there's a lot more pressure and key travel (and time!) required to slam a type bar into the ribbon than is needed to press a modern keyboard key.

I learned Dvorak a decade ago and loved it unless someone else had to use my computer or I had to use a shared computer. I'm typing this on a qwerty keyboard and I'm okay with that now.

> There's an oft-repeated story about the qwerty layout being designed to keep people from typing fast enough to jam typewriters.

Typewriter layouts are designed to avoid jamming, but not by reducing typing speed. They place letters that are pressed in direct succession apart, so that the levers don’t collide. Trained typists can write pretty damn fast on a typewriter.

I thought I remembered something about that, thanks. Dvorak does seem to cluster a lot of commonly used letters, which would definitely jam neighboring type bars pretty quickly unless they used a Blickensderfer-[1] or Selectric-style unified type element.

I've always wanted a Blick, their "scientific" DHIATENSOR layout intrigues me. They also made a qwerty version and I seem to remember a story that their salespeople would make you sign a waiver that you were choosing a less efficient keyboard if you bought one. That's certainly 90% marketing for their layout and maybe 10% fact, but I find it amusing (if true, but I can't seem to find a reference to it any more).

I'll bet typewriter-trained typists can really move. It's definitely a separate skill, at least for the manual typewriters in my collection which have about an inch of key travel and a heck of a lot more actuation force than the gateron red switches I use at work. :-)

Ultimately I find that the fastest layout is the one you know.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blickensderfer_typewriter

> They place letters that are pressed in direct succession apart,

... and that really reduces typing speed. When i switched to dworak I was amazed how my fingers just roll on a keyboard, forming sentences faster than I even form a conscious understanding in which succession should I move my fingers. It just happens as if by itself!! Just think of a word to type and it is already on the screen.

> ... and that really reduces typing speed.

That may be the effect for you, but it's not a goal. It's maybe a tradeoff, but machine writing is a trainable craft. Usual results for trained people are at about 200 - 400 characters per minute measured over 10 minutes. Championship results are at up to 900 characters.

Yeah, and all championship results are on Dvorak keyboards. [1]

[1]: http://www.recordholdersrepublic.co.uk/world-record-holders/...

There are plenty of unofficial records and leader boards for typing speeds where qwerty typists are just as capable (more so even due to sheer availability) as Dvorak typists at hitting 200+wpm, and while that alone shouldn't be used to judge the quality of a particular layout it shouldn't be ignored that there's no difference in attainable max speeds done in short bursts. That says nothing about sustained typing of course, but I strongly suspect if you're already a competent and fast typist in qwerty you'll be comparably as fast in Dvorak and vice versa.

Dvorak is actually pretty bad as a smartphone keyboard, it's advantages with two-handed typing on real keyboard become disadvantages if you type with your thumb.

Dvorak has specialised right- and left-handed layouts. Maybe it also needs specialised one finger layouts, too.

I had wondered about phone keyboards. Part of the reason I switched back was that I couldn't change the layout on my phone and got tired of switching back and forth. (I know there are probably some options now, but there weren't on iPhone 4, Kindle touch, or feature phones with physical keyboards.)

I can imagine you'd need to use both thumbs extensively or you'd be jumping back and forth. I definitely found that when I was laying on my side on the couch, propped up with one arm, qwerty was easier to use with one hand. Not that that's an ergonomic or sustainable way to type, but I was a lazy college student and I didn't care.

> I'm uncomfortable imagining my grandchildren learning C's weird quirks

What about them learning English's even weirder quirks? Does that make you uncomfortable as well?

I have come to the point that I sort of accept C's quirks, and, with the appropriate mindset, I can even love them. I certainly see myself as an old man teaching these arcane quirks to a young and innocent audience.

Also COBOL is still around and most people don't need to learn it anymore.

Most people don't need to learn C either; or any programming language, for that matter.

Sure but I think programmers is an implicit assumption here when talking about which programming languages to learn. We don't need to start splitting hairs here.

And COBOL is extremely niche, while C is still quite common and useful to know.

Isn't that the whole worse is better thing in action? People complained about C and Unix when they were new, but they picked up so much traction, and people invested enough effort into working around the flaws, that it just achieved critical mass. Same thing with JavaScript; it's never going anywhere.

Certainly higher-level languages have edged out C in many domains though.

> Laptops (since first Apple Powerbook) - 30 years.

That kind of Apple revisionism is not correct. The NEC UltraLite predated Apple clamshells by 3 years (1988), and luggables with a battery configuration have been available as early as 1981 (Osborne 1 with an aftermarket 1 hour battery add-on).

The Grid Compass was probably the first true laptop in 1982. But it ran a proprietary operating system by default and costs about $8,000 in 1982 money. The Data General-One came out in 1984 and might be a better candidate. But neither of those were really mainstream.

Don’t neglect the Model 100...

“The TRS-80 Model 100 is a portable computer introduced in 1983. It is one of the first notebook-style computers, featuring a keyboard and liquid crystal display, in a battery-powered package roughly the size and shape of a notepad or large book.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100

It wasn't a laptop in the modern sense though.

For any reason other than it doesn't fold in half?

The iPhone was definitely not the first smart phone.

Nor was the Powerbook the first laptop nor the IBM PC the first PC. Those are all, however arguably responsible for popularizing the technologies in something resembling their current form.

I disagree. I am of the opinion that those form factors were inevitable, and would have come along anyway with or without Apple's offerings.

How is that inconsistent with the parent statement? Even if the form factors were inevitable--e.g. someone would have decided that smartphones didn't need a physical keyboard--someone had to be first to popularize. (Not sure I agree on the laptop but the iPhone pretty clearly popularized the modern smartphone form factor.)

To say they are "responsible" for something can be read as "allowed to take credit for". Being the first to popularize something is a business achievement, which is quite meaningless compared to the technical achievement of being the first to build something.

Something that's a mainstream business success is far more interesting in general than progenitors that never really took off for whatever reasons. They're may still be important as technical achievements but the history books notice those who took things mainstream.

James Watt didn't actually invent the steam engine. He just came up with an invention that made it a lot more efficient.

I can see this in the case of the PC and the laptop, but proto-smartphones were around for years before the iPhone and they were not developing in an iPhone-like direction. Every iPhone-like product that came after was the result of copying. I don't think it was inevitable at all.

One thing I do think is true is that Apple developed sufficient brand permission to be able to do things that were definitely outside of a lot of buyers' comfort zone and arguably needed some iteration to really nail.

I'm still inclined to think someone would have jumped to a smartphone without a keyboard. But it's also true that the iPhone had plenty of critics early on and arguably didn't fully hit its stride until the 3GS.

No, but it was the first wide spread smartphone and the first one most people used. This is the only practical starting point.

Blackberry, Palm, and Windows Mobile phones were more widespread than you're giving them credit for, as were laptops considerably preceding Apple's PowerBook series.

The mindblowing part about these kind of numbers for me always is the sheer amount of smartphones out there.

I mean, imagine a parallel world where those smartphones weren't designed to shove ads down your throat and where they could be used to be as productive as with a laptop, and where people could help to automate their lives on their own with it.

That would be so amazing.

Smartphones are a huge productivity tool, that's why they took off in the first place. Especially Blackberry, which offered the magic technology of accessing your email and calendar from anywhere. The ads are not an obstacle to this, especially not on iPhone.

They are far more than that. For a large number of people, the smartphone is their first and only computing device. Enabling internet access is like rocket fuel for advancing socioeconomic conditions for those in developing nations.

Entire generations have been lifted from poverty due to it.

And "first and only computing device" pales to insignificance next to "first and only bank account" which they also are, in a way. That's huge.

I don't know about you, but a consumption-only "first and only computing device" sounds incredibly dystopian. I get that they have a positive impact, but it feels like we could be doing better.

> I don't know about you, but a consumption-only "first and only computing device" sounds incredibly dystopian

Smartphones aren’t consumption-only.

Doing anything but consumption and lightweight content discovery on smartphones is basically a farce. They are not usable as general-purpose creation machines.

> Doing anything but consumption and lightweight content discovery on smartphones is basically a farce.

I disagree, even when talkingn about a smartphone as a human interface device and not, as was the actual context of the thread, a computing device.

Having a, say, DeX-enabled Android (or even potentially powered by fairly traditional Linux, if one doesn’t just use a major maker device with stock software) smartphone as a computing device doesn’t preclude standard desktop I/O devices fo interact with it in manner very similar to a standard desktop PC.

> They are not usable as general-purpose creation machines.

Again, as an exclusive computing device, they are just about as much as is any computing device.

Even as an exclusive HID, there’s a giant excluded middle between “consumption only” and “not usable as general purpose creation machines”.

What makes a smartphone a smartphone is the ability to use it with just the touchscreen. A smartphone with desktop peripherals is just that, a desktop. What I am arguing is that a bare smartphone (aka what most of those people in the developing world can afford) cannot meaningfully serve, due to being a form factor with a very imprecise input method, as a creation platform for any sort of precise content.

> What makes a smartphone a smartphone is the ability to use it with just the touchscreen

You seem to be conflating the ability to be used with a limited interface with a restriction to be used with only a particular interface. I desktop PC has the ability to be used without a graphics tablet. It would be a much more limited creation device if it were restricted to being used without one. And the same is true of everything that isn’t a touchscreen, microphone, or other built in human interface and smartphones. But a smartphone as an exclusive computing device does not imply the limitations of its built-in interfaces, since having external interfaces is also a standard feature of the class.

While I agree with your definitions of what a computation device is, I also don't see Android being developed on Android in the near future. So many UX conceptual problems won't allow this, so I think that as long as computers are required to build smartphones, they cannot be described as "general purpose" machines.

Its still a poor version of the internet when compared to a PC (laptop/Desktop).

That world cant exist. A flaw of anti capitalist alternatives is that they're non-natural.

Any alternative where trade didn't follow optimal path is due to regulation / force. And in most, the force required to steer humans away from their nature also kills innovation.

Ergo: you cant have a miracle chip in your pocket with no one using it to sell you potato chips.

1. Nobody mentioned capitalism or alternatives in the parent comment.

2. Capitalism is not "natural" either and only started developing in the post-renaissance world.

3. Natural selection demonstrates conclusively that relying on purely natural processes to drive "innovation" often lead to highly non-optimal and harmful trends.

4. Most of the major scientific and technological innovations of the 20th century were either the direct result of or funded by "force" which I take to mean government.

5. Advertisement was not the only monetisation strategy that the internet and telecommunication industry could have taken. The internet could have very easily gone down the subscription route and the only reason why anybody thinks otherwise is because of the decade long marketing that has normalised getting everything for "free".

Laptops existed far before the Powerbook.

It really depends on how you define laptop. There was this sort of thing in the 80s, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_T1100), of course. And there were a couple of laptop-shaped laptops from 1988 on, but they were either spectacularly compromised (the NEC Ultralite had a max of 2MB of storage, for instance) or spectacularly expensive or both. In terms of laptops that were shaped like laptops as we know them, and that were actually usable outside of very specialized applications, the Powerbook 100 and Thinkpad 700T could be reasonably claimed to be about the first.

There’s also the TRS-80 Model 100, launched in 1983