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From: "Greg A. Woods" <woods@robohack.ca>
To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] History of popularity of C
Date: Tue, 26 May 2020 15:36:31 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <m1jdiBT-0036tRC@more.local> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <d6bca9b8fc16b4fb5c34847a52aced59@firemail.de>

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At Tue, 26 May 2020 23:48:43 +0200, "Thomas Paulsen" <thomas.paulsen@firemail.de> wrote:
Subject: Re: [TUHS] History of popularity of C
>
> they don't play any role, as the C language was defined decades ago. I learned it
> before the ansi committee came to an end by Turbo C and soon later MS C, and then
> various *NIX compilers. Recently I written a couple of linux programs using gcc
> with exactly the same syntax I studied 30 years ago, and it works pretty cool. All
> these programs are error free performing very fast while having a small memory
> footprint. For me there is nothing better than C, and I know a lot of languages.

You might be surprised by just how much C has been changed since, say,
C89, or even C90, and how niggly the corner cases can get (i.e. where UB
sticks its ugly head).  Lots of legacy code is now completely broken, at
least with the very latest compilers (especially LLVM, but also GCC).
Some far more recently written code has even had important security
problems, e.g. one in the Linux kernel.  NetBSD has to turn off specific
"features" in the newest compilers when building the kernel lest they
create a broken and/or insecure system.  Some code no longer does what
it seems to do unless you're the most careful language lawyer at reading
it, Standard in hand, and with years of experience.  Some compilers can
help, e.g. by inserting illegal instructions anywhere where UB would
have otherwise allowed the optimizer to go wild and possibly change
things completely, but without such tools, and others such as Valgrind,
one can get into a heap-o-trouble with the slightest misstep; and of
course these tools only work for user-land code, not bare-metal code
such as embedded systems and kernels.

--
					Greg A. Woods <gwoods@acm.org>

Kelowna, BC     +1 250 762-7675           RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>     Avoncote Farms <woods@avoncote.ca>

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  reply	other threads:[~2020-05-26 22:37 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 105+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-05-21 15:27 Tyler Adams
2020-05-21 16:10 ` Toby Thain
2020-05-21 16:30   ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-21 17:22     ` John Foust
2020-05-21 20:17       ` Toby Thain
2020-05-21 16:43   ` Tony Finch
2020-05-21 17:35     ` arnold
2020-05-21 19:16       ` CHARLES KESTER
2020-05-21 20:33         ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-21 20:09       ` Toby Thain
2020-05-21 20:12       ` Tony Finch
2020-05-22  8:28       ` David Arnold
2020-05-21 20:07     ` Toby Thain
2020-05-21 20:56   ` Clem Cole
2020-05-21 23:45     ` Toby Thain
2020-05-21 23:57       ` Richard Salz
2020-05-22  0:17         ` Toby Thain
2020-05-22  4:10         ` John Gilmore
2020-05-22 14:11           ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-22 14:34             ` Richard Salz
2020-05-22 14:17           ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-22  7:42         ` arnold
2020-05-22 23:50   ` Greg A. Woods
2020-05-23  7:28     ` Andy Kosela
2020-05-23 17:08     ` Clem Cole
2020-05-23 17:22       ` Richard Salz
2020-05-23 18:42       ` Derek Fawcus
2020-05-23 19:28       ` Michael Kjörling
2020-05-26  4:21       ` Dave Horsfall
2020-05-26  4:32         ` Ed Carp
2020-05-26  8:21           ` Rob Pike
2020-05-26 14:44             ` Clem Cole
2020-05-26 14:32         ` Clem Cole
2020-05-26 19:50           ` Greg A. Woods
2020-05-26 21:48             ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-26 22:36               ` Greg A. Woods [this message]
2020-05-27 14:37                 ` Ronald Natalie
2020-05-27 15:09                   ` Clem Cole
2020-05-27 16:11                   ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-27 19:49                     ` Greg A. Woods
2020-05-27 20:13                       ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-27 20:23                         ` Richard Salz
2020-05-27 21:00                       ` Nevin Liber
2020-05-27 23:17                         ` Greg A. Woods
2020-06-05 20:57                           ` Dave Horsfall
2020-06-05 21:40                             ` Nemo Nusquam
2020-06-05 21:47                             ` Richard Salz
2020-06-05 22:01                               ` Bakul Shah
2020-06-06 20:49                   ` Ed Carp
2020-06-06 21:08                     ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-06-06 21:13                       ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-06 22:27                       ` Ed Carp
2020-06-06 23:14                         ` Tyler Adams
2020-06-07  5:57                         ` arnold
2020-06-07  9:22                           ` Andy Kosela
2020-06-07  9:39                             ` Ed Carp
2020-06-07 10:02                             ` Brantley Coile
2020-06-07 11:30                             ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-06-07 15:26                             ` Clem Cole
2020-06-07 15:52                               ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-08  1:02                                 ` Adam Thornton
2020-06-08  8:04                                   ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-06-07 17:26                               ` Bakul Shah
2020-06-07 17:35                               ` Bakul Shah
2020-06-07 18:50                               ` Nemo Nusquam
2020-06-07 21:15                                 ` Chris Torek
2020-06-07 22:16                                   ` Dan Cross
2020-06-07 22:56                                     ` Chris Torek
2020-06-07 23:14                                       ` [TUHS] Comparative languages Warren Toomey
2020-06-08  0:24                                       ` [TUHS] History of popularity of C Bram Wyllie
2020-06-08  5:48                                   ` Lars Brinkhoff
2020-06-06 23:31                     ` Bakul Shah
2020-06-07  0:12                       ` Greg A. Woods
2020-06-07 11:04                     ` emanuel stiebler
2020-06-07 11:33                       ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-26 15:19         ` Toby Thain
2020-05-26 16:00         ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-26 16:21           ` Christopher Browne
2020-05-26 19:29             ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-26 19:55             ` Dan Cross
2020-05-26 20:00               ` Jon Steinhart
2020-05-21 16:18 ` Jim Capp
2020-05-21 18:58 ` A. P. Garcia
2020-05-21 19:02 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-21 18:28 Noel Chiappa
2020-05-21 18:44 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-21 19:06   ` Paul Winalski
2020-05-21 20:27     ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-22  8:52 ` Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS
2020-05-22  9:51   ` Tyler Adams
2020-05-22 11:09     ` arnold
2020-05-22 11:15       ` Tyler Adams
2020-05-22 18:40         ` John Gilmore
2020-05-22 19:01           ` Toby Thain
2020-05-22 19:35             ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-22 19:31           ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-22 20:19           ` Michael Kjörling
2020-05-22 14:59       ` Toby Thain
2020-05-22 11:58     ` A. P. Garcia
2020-06-06 21:49 Doug McIlroy
2020-06-06 21:55 ` Warner Losh
2020-06-08 13:56 ` Derek Fawcus
2020-06-08 15:20   ` Richard Salz
2020-06-08 15:30 ` Dan Cross
2020-06-08 16:32 ` Tony Finch

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