| General > General Technical Chat |
| How many people code in C these days, and if so, why? |
| << < (61/99) > >> |
| Picuino:
--- Quote from: engrguy42 on May 11, 2020, 03:43:39 pm ---Somebody mentioned open source. And Microsoft. I HATE open source. I HATE IT !!! As a user it's a royal freakin' PITA. --- End quote --- You have some misconceptions about open software. UNIX V6 was open source, selled by Bell Labs with license (it was not free software, only open software) Red Hat Enterprise Linux is Free and open software, with a lot of technical support that you have to pay to Red Hat (you pay for the support and program tools, not for the OS) They all are different concepts. |
| Picuino:
Red Hat support: https://www.redhat.com/en/store/red-hat-enterprise-linux-server#?sku=RH00003 Ubuntu support: https://buy.ubuntu.com/?cmp_id=6517438474&adg_id=100664098696&kwd=&device=c&gclid=CjwKCAjw7-P1BRA2EiwAXoPWA23MXrtToW9Ke14KKKU_CLXBNS07Udqvoc7C91iEChX7clb3AAiN8BoCngsQAvD_BwE |
| bd139:
Don’t buy Ubuntu support though. That’s worse value for money than Mac Pro wheels. |
| Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on May 11, 2020, 03:01:08 pm ---Do you have actual proof MS influenced C11 in such a way? You seem very convinced of this. --- End quote --- They did add quite a few new members to the SC22 working group. Just four years after the ratification, committee members suggested removing Annex K. I was not, and have never been, a member of SC22, but I have read their public documents, and they openly acknowledge that these features were pushed by Microsoft. Remember, at that point, Microsoft was long on record for attesting that MS C++ will never implement C99. Do you require me to set up a link page with references to those public documents, or can you consider the core of the points, and just ignore my ranty bits about MS' involvement? The points, regardless of who pushed them, stand on their merits – after all, the entire C standards committee did ratify it all. --- Quote from: chriva on May 11, 2020, 03:14:51 pm ---If someone has the penguin as a profile picture you just know they'll hate ms in every way possible and even blame them for stuff they didn't do. --- End quote --- And Swedes traditionally hate all us Finns, and call us "finnjävlar", "finnish fucks". So, your opinion of me personally is meaningless, and honestly, the fact that you even offered it, is disgusting. How about you leave my person out, and instead comment on the points I made? Those are what matter, not who I am. :) Tux is a mascot. I like doing Linux work, so I adopted a version of it for myself. For the first batch of Linux-based student laptops at the local Uni, I even created a bootsplash with a version of Tux rolling its eyes as the boot progressed. The purpose was the same: branding. Zealotry is not in the picture. I do recall hoping for a larger SSD in the early units, specifically for running Windows and other OSes in VMs, too. (The first model only had a 120 G Samsung SSD, which is a bit tight, considering Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, and other useful Sci software were also installable on these machines.) I also do proprietary work. I do not have any reason to ask why someone else would use Windows just because I don't – because it is just a tool. Whatever works, works. It becomes meaningful only when you add context, and external measurements to use in the comparison of different tools. Somewhere on this board is an early post of mine about the various licenses I suggest for different type projects. (No, it is not just a list of GPL variants.) --- Quote from: chriva on May 11, 2020, 03:14:51 pm ---The open source world have benefited A LOT from big corps too. --- End quote --- Yes, and a few companies have hurt it more than most. The "past Microsoft" has done immense harm, intentionally, as part of its Embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy. It is important to remember that this was what Microsoft internally described the strategy, not some crazy Linux conspiracy theorists stamped on it. The "current Microsoft" is doing a lot of positive work in the open source arena. They are definitely no longer an antagonist, but a participant and contributor, and that is good. If we look at say Linux kernel developers, most of them get a salary from small and large tech companies. I find nothing odd in that, having run an IT company for a decade myself, doing a lot of proprietary server-side stuff among other things. (In another thread, I've mentioned how that broke me, because I'm much more of a tool guy, a janitor/developer/inventor, than a business guy.) I would not find it suspicious or odd, even if some of the Linux devs were on MS payroll. (In fact, that would be a very positive thing, considering certain patents and licensing.) However, MS's business strategy still requires barriers from developers to shift away from the Microsoft platform. WSL2 and its "almost-linux" environment is a particularly good example of this. It will be compatible enough so that software is trivial to port to WSL2, but anyone learning to develop in WSL2 will find all other POSIXy systems "more difficult", and will prefer WSL2 instead. Business-wise this is a sound strategy, and not "evil", but for someone who strongly believes in having vendors compete and not build walled gardens, it is not a good thing. I would like to emphasize that none of this has anything to do with open source or closed source; this is about portability and the quality and future of the C language as a tool. I've already explained how C fills a niche at the low system level that is hard to replace with anything else, and how C++ in particular is not suited for that. None of the new languages have shown practical examples of filling anything in that niche efficiently. My point was that C99 and POSIX is the best toolkit for that niche, and that C11 (and C18, as it was basically just a collection of erratas to C11) included a couple of good things, and a bunch of optional things that benefit a single vendor and not the users of the C programming language in general. So, if you disagree with me, I'd like to know exactly why. I mean, I am not interested in how you see my person, do please do stick to the subject, and not my person. I do freely admit that I really shouldn't blame Microsoft, because it was the entire multi-vendor C standards committee and working group SC22 that ratified the standard. But, the way they first publicly stated for years that they refuse to implement C99, and then suddenly participated in the C standards committee to develop C11 with features previously implemented only by MS C++ compiler, was .. worth ranting about to me. Then again, it was the "past Microsoft", with a totally different leadership and strategies than the company today. And then again, international standards are not software, and are basically impossible to fork, so the errors made then may be impossible to correct. :-// I wish I was better writer in English, so I could have twisted the ranty parts into snide humor; that would have worked much better. But me fail English often. |
| Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: bd139 on May 11, 2020, 04:28:49 pm ---Standardisation by committee is a sure way to fuck a specification. --- End quote --- Make that design by committee, and I'll agree so hard I'll hurt my neck. Before C11, the C standards committee didn't tell compiler writers how their compilers should work, they simply ratified an existing agreement. Additional features weren't pushed from the top down, but by developer users requiring certain features pushing them through their compiler vendors. If it matters any, I do have similar trust issues with GCC developers, as in the past they were keener on following the standard than in actually producing sensible-in-the-real-world behaviour. I am told they purged a lot of the slow stones out, and the development cycle seems much faster now that they switched to C++ (and that is a very good thing; it used to take years for bug fixes to filter through), but I haven't personally had any need to interact with them for a couple of years now. I also have a lot to complain about various Linux distributions and inanities in the Linux kernel, if anyone is willing to listen. I just ain't a fanboy. (Except maybe of good arguments – the interesting kind, not the angry kind – and solving problems, and that sort of stuff.) |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |