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"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz

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  "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-14 11:55 -0600
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2013-01-15 05:02 +0000
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-14 22:44 -0800
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-15 11:20 -0600
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2013-01-15 20:06 +0000
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-15 20:27 +0000
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-15 17:06 -0600
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 01:52 -0600
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-15 17:08 -0600
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz falk@rahul.net (Edward A. Falk) - 2013-01-15 22:39 +0000
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-16 11:00 -0800
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-16 20:08 +0000
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-16 20:09 +0000
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-16 15:36 -0600
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-16 14:01 -0800
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 02:15 -0600
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2013-01-17 07:15 -0500
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Nobody <nobody@nowhere.com> - 2013-01-17 15:09 +0000
                  Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 14:42 -0600
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-17 12:58 +0000
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 14:59 -0600
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz falk@rahul.net (Edward A. Falk) - 2013-01-19 23:37 +0000
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-19 18:47 -0600
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-20 00:49 +0000
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> - 2013-01-18 16:30 +0100
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-19 19:12 +0000
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-19 16:40 -0600
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-20 00:52 +0000
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-20 01:26 +0000
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 00:32 -0600
                  Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 01:42 -0600
                  Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-20 13:06 +0000
                    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 11:30 -0600
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-19 19:28 -0600
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-19 19:05 -0800
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 01:32 -0600
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-20 00:29 -0800
                  Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 04:24 -0600
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-15 23:02 +0000
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-15 16:06 -0800
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "Mel Smith" <med_cutout_syntel@aol.com> - 2013-01-15 17:54 -0700
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 02:42 -0600
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2013-01-18 01:09 -0600
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-18 11:45 +0000
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2013-01-18 14:43 -0600
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-18 23:31 +0000
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-19 00:23 +0000
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-19 15:17 +1300

Page 3 of 3 — ← Prev page 1 2 [3]

#30178

Damien Katz replied to me:

"Thanks for the feedback. Languages that compile down to C are very 
portable. Cool! "

(in  response to my email to him several days ago about the Harbour language 
(or Hi-C) )

-Mel Smith

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#30244

On 1/15/2013 6:06 PM, William Ahern wrote:
> BartC <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
>
>
>> "Lynn McGuire" <lmc@winsim.com> wrote in message
>> news:kd1gra$vd6$1@dont-email.me...
>>> "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz
>>>     http://damienkatz.net/2013/01/the_unreasonable_effectiveness_of_c.html
>>>
>>> " It's because C is so damn successful as an
>>> abstraction over the underlying machine and making
>>> that high level, it's made most low level languages
>>> irrelevant. C is that good at what it does."
>
>> "Callable from Anywhere
>
>> C has a standardized application binary interface (ABI) that is supported by
>> every OS, language and platform in existence."
>
>> Been carried away a bit by his own enthusiasm I think..
>
> The ABI isn't standardized across platforms, but on each platform the C ABI
> is more-or-less the prototype for the ABI of other compiled languages. Even
> JVMs usually have to grok the local platform's C ABI. Thus, most languages
> have some sort of native mechanism for interoperating with C, with varying
> degress of convenience but alwa well defined.
>
> Often, of course, the C "ABI" interoperability is a side-effect of the fact
> that the language is implemented in C. Example: Perl or PHP.
>

yeah, my own language also uses the C ABI in this sense, at least for 
external calls.

my past (long-since dead) native code-generator also used a slightly 
modified C ABI, mostly in that it was modified to sometimes behave more 
like "thiscall" and with its own funky name mangling.


also on Linux x86-64, the ABI is also slightly modified in that I am too 
lazy to bother to correctly implementing struct passing (because the 
rules are IMO kind of absurd), so I am using a simplified set of rules:
if the struct can be passed in a single register (eg: RDX or XMM0) it 
will do so;
otherwise, it will just pass/return it via a reference, and call it good 
enough.

the difference is mostly regarding non-trivial structs which the ABI 
specifies decomposing and passing in multiple registers, which I am just 
not going to bother with.

nevermind if SysV/AMD64 is one of my more disliked ABIs.
it is almost like they set out to make it overly complicated and a pain 
to implement support for or something...

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#30284

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:55:50 -0600, Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com>
wrote:

>"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz
>    http://damienkatz.net/2013/01/the_unreasonable_effectiveness_of_c.html
>
>" It's because C is so damn successful as an
>abstraction over the underlying machine and making
>that high level, it's made most low level languages
>irrelevant. C is that good at what it does."



Nah.  C is popular mainly because it's popular.  It doesn't have any
hideous flaws for a low level language, but it's nothing special,
language-wise (and clearly better low-level-ish languages exist).  But
because it has become ubiquitous, you have support on every platform,
heck entire platforms designed with good C support as a primary
requirement, heroic optimizing compilers, tool chains, and all that.
It's at the point where if you're platform doesn't have good C
support, it's probably DOA anyway.

And just try telling the Fortran guys that "C is the fastest language
out there".  C's aliasing issues present huge problems for compilers.

Now that's not a bad thing.  Having support everywhere is a *huge*
benefit to us all, even better having *good* support everywhere.  But
it has darn little to do with the language - C is an OK language, with
a fantastic ecosystem.

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#30296

"Robert Wessel" <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:qaohf8d145gdvkjsuvu6454lf9pmsn1nvg@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:55:50 -0600, Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com>
> wrote:
>
>>"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz
>>    http://damienkatz.net/2013/01/the_unreasonable_effectiveness_of_c.html
>>
>>" It's because C is so damn successful as an
>>abstraction over the underlying machine and making
>>that high level, it's made most low level languages
>>irrelevant. C is that good at what it does."

> Nah.  C is popular mainly because it's popular.  It doesn't have any
> hideous flaws for a low level language, but it's nothing special,
> language-wise (and clearly better low-level-ish languages exist).

Which ones?

-- 
Bartc 

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#30320

On Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:45:28 -0000, "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:

>
>
>"Robert Wessel" <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
>news:qaohf8d145gdvkjsuvu6454lf9pmsn1nvg@4ax.com...
>> On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:55:50 -0600, Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz
>>>    http://damienkatz.net/2013/01/the_unreasonable_effectiveness_of_c.html
>>>
>>>" It's because C is so damn successful as an
>>>abstraction over the underlying machine and making
>>>that high level, it's made most low level languages
>>>irrelevant. C is that good at what it does."
>
>> Nah.  C is popular mainly because it's popular.  It doesn't have any
>> hideous flaws for a low level language, but it's nothing special,
>> language-wise (and clearly better low-level-ish languages exist).


Ada, Modula-2, some versions of Algol, to name a few.  Quality is
something of a judgment call, of course.

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#30331

"Robert Wessel" <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:ltcjf8lb9gr208oop7d790rj2tqoilnc2d@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:45:28 -0000, "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
>>"Robert Wessel" <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> wrote in message

>>> C ...
>>> it's nothing special,
>>> language-wise (and clearly better low-level-ish languages exist).
>
>> [Which ones?]

> Ada, Modula-2, some versions of Algol, to name a few.  Quality is
> something of a judgment call, of course.

OK, those aren't quite what I'd call low-level, in the way that C is.

I've worked on a few myself, but there seem to be few mainstream languages 
now at the level of C or below (ie. 'machine-oriented'). (In the past there 
were languages such as PL/M but now C seems to be the main one.)

-- 
bartc 

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#30332

BartC <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
 
(snip)

>> Ada, Modula-2, some versions of Algol, to name a few.  Quality is
>> something of a judgment call, of course.
 
> OK, those aren't quite what I'd call low-level, in the way that C is.

Yes, but you can also see that C is not quite as high level, either.
 
> I've worked on a few myself, but there seem to be few mainstream languages 
> now at the level of C or below (ie. 'machine-oriented'). (In the past there 
> were languages such as PL/M but now C seems to be the main one.)

There was (maybe still is) PL/360. 

It is really an assembler that looks like a HLL, as surprising
side effects occur if you aren't looking. 

The only others comparable to C that I can think of are the
predecessors, B and BCPL, and, as mentioned, PL/M.

-- glen

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#30335

glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> BartC <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
>
> (snip)
>
>>> Ada, Modula-2, some versions of Algol, to name a few.  Quality is
>>> something of a judgment call, of course.
>
>> OK, those aren't quite what I'd call low-level, in the way that C is.
>
> Yes, but you can also see that C is not quite as high level, either.
>
>> I've worked on a few myself, but there seem to be few mainstream languages
>> now at the level of C or below (ie. 'machine-oriented'). (In the past there
>> were languages such as PL/M but now C seems to be the main one.)
>
> There was (maybe still is) PL/360.
>
> It is really an assembler that looks like a HLL, as surprising
> side effects occur if you aren't looking.
>
> The only others comparable to C that I can think of are the
> predecessors, B and BCPL, and, as mentioned, PL/M.

Or its successor: C++.

-- 
Ian Collins

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