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Hacktical C: practical hacker's guide to the C programming language

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218 points signa11 | 17 comments | 14 Apr 25 10:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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pjmlp ◴[14 Apr 25 13:43 UTC] No.43681194[source]▶
> The reason I believe C is and always will be important is that it stands in a class of its own as a mostly portable assembler language, offering similar levels of freedom.

When your computer is a PDP-11, otherwise it is a high level systems language like any other.

replies(7): >>43682173 #>>43682246 #>>43682554 #>>43682928 #>>43683332 #>>43683914 #>>43701871 #
grandempire ◴[14 Apr 25 15:17 UTC] No.43682246[source]▶
Which other popular language more accurately represents a random access machine of fixed word length?
replies(3): >>43682309 #>>43682371 #>>43682763 #
1. pjmlp ◴[14 Apr 25 15:28 UTC] No.43682371[source]▶
I don't know, Ada, Modula-2, Object Pascal, PL/I, NEWP, PL.8, D, Zig, Mesa, ATS,....

But then again, you booby trapped the question with popular language.

replies(2): >>43682583 #>>43682636 #
2. guywithahat ◴[14 Apr 25 15:43 UTC] No.43682583[source]▶
If a language is unpopular, people won't want to work for you and you'll run into poor support. Rewriting a library may take months of dev time, whereas C has an infinite number of libraries to work with and examples to look at.
replies(2): >>43682910 #>>43701784 #
3. grandempire ◴[14 Apr 25 15:49 UTC] No.43682636[source]▶
Many of those languages do not have pointers - which are fundamental to how modern instruction sets work.
replies(1): >>43682903 #
4. pjmlp ◴[14 Apr 25 16:15 UTC] No.43682903[source]▶
Yes they do, point an example from that group, and I will gladly prove you wrong.
replies(2): >>43682999 #>>43683399 #
5. pjmlp ◴[14 Apr 25 16:15 UTC] No.43682910[source]▶
Moving goalposts regarding systems programming languages features, some on the group predate C by a decade.
replies(1): >>43683148 #
6. ◴[14 Apr 25 16:23 UTC] No.43682999{3}[source]▶
7. guywithahat ◴[14 Apr 25 16:35 UTC] No.43683148{3}[source]▶
Being old doesn't mean anyone knows the language. I mean if the language predates C significantly and nobody uses is then there's probably a really good for it. The goalposts aren't moving they're just missing the shot
replies(1): >>43684997 #
8. grandempire ◴[14 Apr 25 17:00 UTC] No.43683399{3}[source]▶
Well sounds like you are confident and we are going to get into a semantic argument about what qualifies as a pointer.

So which of these languages do you think is a better representation of hardware and not a PDP-11?

replies(1): >>43689392 #
9. OCASMv2 ◴[14 Apr 25 19:12 UTC] No.43684997{4}[source]▶
Popularity isn't a measure of quality. Never has been and certainly not in the case of programming languages.
replies(1): >>43685645 #
10. grandempire ◴[14 Apr 25 19:59 UTC] No.43685645{5}[source]▶
There is unpopular - and then there is can I get a working toolchain for modern OS that’s not emulated.
replies(1): >>43686764 #
11. OCASMv2 ◴[14 Apr 25 21:57 UTC] No.43686764{6}[source]▶
Still not a measure of quality.
replies(1): >>43687227 #
12. grandempire ◴[14 Apr 25 23:00 UTC] No.43687227{7}[source]▶
Are we having a discussion about the greatest language of all time? What’s your context here.
13. pjmlp ◴[15 Apr 25 05:53 UTC] No.43689392{4}[source]▶
Better representation of the hardware?

None of them, you use Assembly if you want the better representation of hardware.

Yes, I am quite confident, because I have been dispelling the C myth of the true and only systems programming language since the 1990's.

replies(1): >>43695517 #
14. grandempire ◴[15 Apr 25 16:56 UTC] No.43695517{5}[source]▶
So then your comment about C being an outdated PDP-11 must be equally true of other languages. So it says nothing.
replies(1): >>43703827 #
15. ryao ◴[16 Apr 25 05:24 UTC] No.43701784[source]▶
wears math hat

C does not have an infinite number of libraries and examples. The number of libraries and examples C has is quite large, and there are an infinite number of theoretically possible libraries and examples, but the number of libraries and examples that exist are finite.

replies(1): >>43711414 #
16. pjmlp ◴[16 Apr 25 11:02 UTC] No.43703827{6}[source]▶
Not really, some of those languages predate the very existence of C and PDP-11.
17. Koshkin ◴[16 Apr 25 23:26 UTC] No.43711414{3}[source]▶
The infinite is a convenient abstraction of the finite.