Re:Sshole
by adgjlsfhk1 on Thursday November 05, 2026 @03:09PM
(#50383815)
C is definitely not the most weakly typed (e.g. Javascript/PHP are both weaker), but IMO C is weaker than python in that python will give you a runtime type error if you do something invalid, while in C you cast something and just get UB. Most higher level strongly typed languages are able to make their casts checked because they have generics to remove the need for 99% of them, but C is missing those features and thus has to rely much more heavily on unchecked and unsafe runtime casts.
Implicit conversion could be seen as weak typing, but it is limited to specific arithmetic operations in C. I would see implicit conversions as problematic if they allowed operations that make no sense. Decay of arrays and function to pointer conversion also do not seem problematic to me for this reason.
Void pointers are also weakly typed, but they are specifically designed for this. So if you do not want this behavior, one would simply not use them. It is a bit like using "unsafe" in Rust.