On Mon, May 02, 2016 at 11:12:08AM +1000, Timothy Rice wrote:
> > C is definitely not suckless either, especially when it comes
> > to UB, but it's probably the language with least suck and
> > highest simplicity while giving the most power to the developer.
>
> Not too long ago I expressed support for C as a way to obtain very fast
> programs; the context is I work around people who are interested in stat
> mech, MCMC, simulations of complex systems, etc.
>
> A more experienced developer replied that in fact Go has comparable speed
> to C but does not lead to the same memory management challenges, thus
> should usually be preferred. It appears that most interest in C these days
> is from people who need to work with Arduinos.
>
> So, while we're on the (off-)topic of comparing the suckiness of various
> languages, what do people here think about Go?
--------
When you want to promote a new language:
1 - write a boostrap compiler (for kernel profile and other profiles) in the current "system language" (I guess C, but gcc is now at least c++98).
2 - write a usable kernel with your language (kernel profile).
3 - write a compiler for that new language using this new language (all profiles).
The first components which should be written using this new language are the basic system components *and the kernel*.
They all epic-ly fail at the kernel step.
--------
There is zero perfect languages. There are already tons of unperfect languages
out there: C, D, haskell, python[23], ruby, perl, guile, java, c++, swift,
javascript, ml family, php... each with tons of frameworks and variations.
No syntactic sugar/comfort from those will account for the technical cost
increase of the software stack, already screaming in pain because of
their sheer number.
Basically they are no significant points to diverge from C (max ISO C99). I'm
actually thinking that nowadays, diverging from simple C, is hurting the
software stack.
It's by far the best compromise.
--
Sylvain
Received on Mon May 02 2016 - 04:40:01 CEST