My article C's Biggest Mistake on front page of https://news.ycombinator.com !

On 7/21/2018 11:53 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> My article C's Biggest Mistake on front page of https://news.ycombinator.com !

Direct link:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585357

On Sunday, 22 July 2018 at 20:10:27 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 7/21/2018 11:53 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> My article C's Biggest Mistake on front page of https://news.ycombinator.com !
>
> Direct link:
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585357

The responses are not encouraging, but I suppose they're useful for sociologists studying fallacious thinking.

On Monday, 23 July 2018 at 11:51:54 UTC, Jim Balter wrote:
> On Sunday, 22 July 2018 at 20:10:27 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 7/21/2018 11:53 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> My article C's Biggest Mistake on front page of https://news.ycombinator.com !
>>
>> Direct link:
>> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585357
>
> The responses are not encouraging, but I suppose they're useful for sociologists studying fallacious thinking.

In my experience, people never learn, even from the blatantly obvious, _particularly_ when they're invested in the outdated. What inevitably happens is the new tech gets good enough to put them out of business, then they finally pick it up or retire. Until most system software is written in D/Go/Rust/Swift/Zig/etc., they will keep mouthing platitudes about how C is here to stay.

On Monday, 23 July 2018 at 11:51:54 UTC, Jim Balter wrote:
> On Sunday, 22 July 2018 at 20:10:27 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 7/21/2018 11:53 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> My article C's Biggest Mistake on front page of https://news.ycombinator.com !
>>
>> Direct link:
>> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585357
>
> The responses are not encouraging, but I suppose they're useful for sociologists studying fallacious thinking.

I agree.

As I've already said in the past here on this forum, D's way of managing string/array/slices in the same manner is one of its biggest advances over C/C++, both in safety and expressivity.

Very simple stuff indeed, but still lightyears ahead of C++, Java, C#, etc.

And something that REALLY must be integrated into BetterC's low-level standard library in some way IMHO...

On 7/23/2018 4:51 AM, Jim Balter wrote:
> The responses are not encouraging, but I suppose they're useful for sociologists studying fallacious thinking.

A big motivation for starting D was not having to convince the C/C++ community of such things. I'd rather write code than argue.

On 7/23/2018 5:39 AM, Joakim wrote:
> In my experience, people never learn, even from the blatantly obvious, _particularly_ when they're invested in the outdated. What inevitably happens is the new tech gets good enough to put them out of business, then they finally pick it up or retire. Until most system software is written in D/Go/Rust/Swift/Zig/etc., they will keep mouthing platitudes about how C is here to stay.

I've predicted before that what will kill C is managers and customers requiring memory safety because unsafeness costs them millions. The "just hire better programmers" will never work.

On Monday, 23 July 2018 at 22:45:15 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I've predicted before that what will kill C is managers and customers requiring memory safety because unsafeness costs them millions. The "just hire better programmers" will never work.

I have yet to see a company Walter where higher ups will take correct actions to resolve issues.

Customers do not understand **** about programming. Your lucky if most clients can even get a proper specification formulated for what they want. If clients are that knowledgeable we do not need to constantly deal with issues where clients had things in their heads different then what they told / envisioned.

And most manager are not going to rock the boat and stick their necks out. Not when they can simply blame issues on programmer incompetence or "it has always been like that with programming languages". I have yet to see managers really taking responsibility beyond guiding the projects so they do not get fired and hope to rack in bonuses. Issues can always be blamed on the tools or programmers.

Sorry but that response is so naive Walter that it surprises me. Its like wanting a unicorn.

And frankly, good luck convincing any company to convert millions of C code into D code. Not when manager hear about some new language or framework or whatever that is the chizz. They rather keep running the old code and move to something new. D is not something new, its not the chizz, its the same issue that D has struggle with for years.

Its the same reason why that topic derailed so fast. You want to see something fun. Mention PHP on HackerNews/Reddit and you see the exact same trolling. People rather push their new favorite language, be it Go, Rust, ... then pick D.

Response at my work when i made some stuff in D... "Why did you not use Go". Because the managers knew Go from the hype. They know Google is behind it. And some of our colleagues in sister companies already used Go. And that is all it takes.

I am sorry to say but to succeed as a language beyond being a small or hobby language it takes: Being established already or having a big name to hype behind your "product". Anything beyond that will have topic derail and frankly, its more negative then positive.

And D has too much old baggage. Its the same reason why PHP despite being a good language ( for what it is ), still keeps getting the exact same crude on forums.

If i am honest, DasBetterC is a for me unreliable D product because using specific D library function can be GC. Or DasBetterC needs to be sold as C only, ever, forget about everything else that is D ( library, packages, ... ). Until everything is 100% GC free, your going to run into this. And even when its 100% GC free, people have long memories.

Its always a struggle swimming up a river.

On Tuesday, 24 July 2018 at 00:41:54 UTC, RhyS wrote:
> Customers do not understand **** about programming. Your lucky if most clients can even get a proper specification formulated for what they want. If clients are that knowledgeable we do not need to constantly deal with issues where clients had things in their heads different then what they told / envisioned.

I think that what Walter meant was when the customer have this problem where their data is leaking (and perhaps losing money) they will ask why, and an alternative to avoid this in the future will rely on a language that tend to follow the safety aspect.

John B.

On Tuesday, 24 July 2018 at 00:41:54 UTC, RhyS wrote:

> I am sorry to say but to succeed as a language beyond being a small or hobby language it takes: Being established already or having a big name to hype behind your "product". Anything beyond that will have topic derail and frankly, its more negative then positive.

If I'm not wrong, Python has grown up really slowly and quietly, till the recent big success in the scientific field.

I remember also when Ruby was released, and what a killer application like Ruby on Rails has done for its success.

/Paolo