@morbiuswilters said:
Okay, you just lost me. C requires tons of libraries to do anything non-trivial. And then the dependencies, my God.. I can't even tell you how many different versions of libc are scattered throughout my system. It's a fucking nightmare.
I guess maybe there are two different flavors of "C" programming out there: C programming on the desktop, which I agree is pretty atrocious, and C programming on very small important devices that basically make society work (cars, machines, airplanes, power plants, etc.).
I don't think I've ever used libc in my desktop programming, and I sure as hell haven't used it in my embedded programming. And I'm not saying "no libraries"...
And yes, while C has changed, it has generally been by adding things - it has never fundamentally changed the way something works, like, say, Perl or Python or PHP. I don't think I've ever seen anything in C be deprecated, or the meaning of an operator change. I am of course ignoring things like pragmas and all that other undefined crap.
@blakeyrat said:
So stagnation is a feature, to you. What do you drive to work? A 1966 VW
Bug? Because you know those newer cars keep CHANGING THINGS!!!
Modern cars have improved, yes, but if they have changed the way computer languages have, every time you bought a new car you'd have to learn a new user interface, speak a different language, and alternate which seat had the steering wheel.
@blakeyrat said:
Pascal
My experience was that while Pascal doesn't let you hurt yourself, it makes it very hard to do useful things. And I'm not aware of that many modern Pascal compilers. I might have to go look that one up...there would be some nice things like strict typing in my line of work...
@blakeyrat said:
.Net
If they have a .Net compiler for MPC5xxx processors, I'd be willing to try it. The almighty google can't seem to find anything promising (there appears to be a German company called HILF! that might offer something...)
Trust me, I have to fight against the things people do in C all the time - if there was a better tool, that would save me time and help my company make more money, we'd use it.
It goes back to the insurance idea - the pitfalls of C code in the wild are tragedy of the commons, and no company is willing to take on all that expense themselves. Instead they buy a small insurance policy for data losses or whatever, or hope the government bails everyone out. The only solution (sadly) is going to be something like the EPA of software.... which I don't think any of us really wants.