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A comment on The C juggernaut illustrated (2012). Parent comment

Re:The C juggernaut illustrated (2012) by matt_daemon on Saturday February 04, 2023 @06:25PM (#34659543)
> As far as I can tell, there isn't anyone on the face of the planet trying to build anything like C in order to replace it.

To the best of my knowledge this is what Zig is trying to do.

https://ziglang.org/

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Re:The C juggernaut illustrated (2012) by andrewmcwatters on Saturday February 04, 2023 @06:38PM (#34659665)
Thank you for mentioning this! I wonder if Zig is the closest modern thing to C that we have? D seems to not want to fill the ANSI C role. Walter Bright seems to be a bright guy, but I want a programming language that follows the philosophies embodied and manifested in C. You can sort of get the idea that the guys behind Go roughly had this sort of Unix-esque philosophy mentality, but they never come out and explicitly say it[1][2], and so I think it wasn't an explicit goal for them.

[1]: https://go.dev/blog/5years

[2]: https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponenti...

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Re:The C juggernaut illustrated (2012) by hgs3 on Saturday February 04, 2023 @06:41PM (#34659700)
I've only toyed around with it, but D does offer the -BetterC flag [1] FWIW.

[1] https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html

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Re:The C juggernaut illustrated (2012) by WalterBright on Saturday February 04, 2023 @06:42PM (#34659709)
> Walter Bright seems to be a bright guy

I had to change my born name from Walter Dummkopf.

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Re:The C juggernaut illustrated (2012) by WalterBright on Saturday February 04, 2023 @06:52PM (#34659808)
> I want a programming language that follows the philosophies embodied and manifested in C

I don't really know what is missing on that front in DasBetterC. D can call any C code directly, D even has a built in assembler. D can import C code. And you can program free of the depredations of the C preprocessor.

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Re:The C juggernaut illustrated (2012) by WalterBright on Saturday February 04, 2023 @06:54PM (#34659825)
> I didn't catch myself with the "bright" thing.

When my dad was in the Air Force, the commander assigned Major Smart to be his office mate, for the sole purpose of putting "Bright & Smart" on the door. He figured nothing could go wrong in that department.

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Re:The C juggernaut illustrated (2012) by Tozen on Monday February 06, 2023 @04:50AM (#34675380)
The problem is that alternatives to C can be built, it's a matter that its usage will become so widespread that it will be viewed and used as a replacement. Lots of people keep viewing C as just another language, versus it being a quasi protocol that other languages communicate through and defacto standard.

Zig is still in beta and has to reach 1.0, to even realistically enter such discussions (like you can with Rust), and it appears to be years away from achieving even that. C is at the top of the ladder, and Zig is around the bottom, trying to climb up. Zig is not even on many language rankings or at the bottom of them. It's not even anywhere near the top on just GitHub rankings, even when adjusted for year creation date.

The odds of making it to the top 5 languages used and widespread acceptance are very slim, no matter how much forced hype, zealotry, or evangelism.

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