Re: [TUHS] PDP-11 legacy, C, and modern architectures

[Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com>]

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On Tuesday, June 26, 2018, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 05:54:32PM -0400, Ronald Natalie wrote:
> > >
> > > So I agree, had the same initial reaction.  But I read the paper a
> > > second time and the point about Fortran, all these years later, still
> > > being a thing resonated.  The hardware guys stand on their heads to
> > > give us coherent caches.
> >
> > Fortran is a higher level language.    It gives he compiler more
> flexibility in deciding what the programmer intended and how to
> automatically optimize for the platform.
> > C is often a ???You asked for it, you got it??? type paradigm/
>
> I think you are more or less agreeing with the author.  (I also think, as
> Unix die hards, we all bridle a little when anyone dares to say anything
> negative about C.  We should resist that if it gets in the way of making
> things better.)
>
> The author at least has me thinking about how you could make a C like
> language that didn't ask as much from the hardware.
> --
>
>
David Chisnall is known for pushing Go as a next generation C.  He even
wrote a book about it.  I think he has a point in saying that Go was
created as direct remedy to many things in C.  Most of it features come
from decades of experience working with C, and seeing ways in which it can
be improved.

--Andy

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