Re:“C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success” – Dennis R...
by jart on Sunday July 09, 2023 @09:54AM
(#36654456)
> Relatedly, it's more explicit than almost any other language.
Total opposite. C is like poetry and icebergs. You have to look beneath the code to understand its meaning. I like writing software that appears simple to others. The C language gives me lots of tools for doing it. I'm a fan of promotion, narrowing, implicit casting, and I've even used implicit coercion. The best thing about C is how implicit it is. That's the grand trick which attracted everyone to the language. All the programs written in it all looked effortless to create, which was much more encouraging for beginners than something like COBOL or PL/1 which dumps a truckload of complexity on you all at once. Back in the K&R C days, even more stuff was implicit than there is today. For example, you didn't use to need to use types at all in your programs. You could also freely cast between integers and pointers.
Total opposite. C is like poetry and icebergs. You have to look beneath the code to understand its meaning. I like writing software that appears simple to others. The C language gives me lots of tools for doing it. I'm a fan of promotion, narrowing, implicit casting, and I've even used implicit coercion. The best thing about C is how implicit it is. That's the grand trick which attracted everyone to the language. All the programs written in it all looked effortless to create, which was much more encouraging for beginners than something like COBOL or PL/1 which dumps a truckload of complexity on you all at once. Back in the K&R C days, even more stuff was implicit than there is today. For example, you didn't use to need to use types at all in your programs. You could also freely cast between integers and pointers.