Eric S. Raymond Calls LLVM The "Superior Compiler" To GCC

[SystemCrasher]

I will just answer to this, I don't think the rest of your rambling deserves an answer. Back in the 80s I learned programming on a Commodore C64, starting with the inbuilt Basic interpreter (you got that for free and you may be shocked that it was Microsoft Basic), later with freely available Assembler. You could do the same on other machines that were wide spread at that time, like the Amstrad CPC, Commodore C16, +4 and all the others, TI 99/4A and what not. Guess what, all these machines had a proprietary OS, all of them came with a proprietary programming language, Even DOS came with QBasic (or was it gwBasic?), none of them required you to pay a fee or look out for license violations. I call bullshit on you, seriously.

And if you got your memory damaged, let's remind that even crap like ARJ and PKZIP were commercial products and it's not like if you can legally decompress archive without buying these (or enjoy being some flithy pirate scum). Fortunately, world has changed forever and it will never will be same again. Thanks to all opensource SW authors who made it possible.

As for BASIC: it is not suitable for more or less serious programming. So it sounds like a plan: supply some unusable shit and distract people. So, less competitors on market. It's not like if you can write decent OS, proper system tools, more or less adequate environment and so on using BASIC crap. Somehow, Microsoft preferred C and asm even at ms-dos ages, I can remember they used "Microsoft C" and it was NOT supplied with their OSes. And in fact, situaion was really bad before Stallman got annoyed by this fact and wrote something we all know: GCC. This has been absolutely required prerequisite to get there. So all these dullards yelling at him should get idea: if there was no Stallman, there was no porper and open C compiler. That was GCC and Stallman who made real opensource OS development possible. More or less same goes for set of tools running over kernel in *nix-like systems.

Interestingly, BSD nuts took some few desperate attempts to use "permissive licensed" compilers in past (attempts to use PCC, etc). Yet it worked realy bad unless their corporate overlords from Apple stepped in and wrote more or less decent compiler on their own.

[Luke_Wolf]

And if you got your memory damaged, let's remind that even crap like ARJ and PKZIP were commercial products and it's not like if you can legally decompress archive without buying these (or enjoy being some flithy pirate scum). Fortunately, world has changed forever and it will never will be same again. Thanks to all opensource SW authors who made it possible.

As for BASIC: it is not suitable for more or less serious programming. So it sounds like a plan: supply some unusable shit and distract people. So, less competitors on market. It's not like if you can write decent OS, proper system tools, more or less adequate environment and so on using BASIC crap. Somehow, Microsoft preferred C and asm even at ms-dos ages, I can remember they used "Microsoft C" and it was NOT supplied with their OSes. And in fact, situaion was really bad before Stallman got annoyed by this fact and wrote something we all know: GCC. This has been absolutely required prerequisite to get there. So all these dullards yelling at him should get idea: if there was no Stallman, there was no porper and open C compiler. That was GCC and Stallman who made real opensource OS development possible. More or less same goes for set of tools running over kernel in *nix-like systems.

Interestingly, BSD nuts took some few desperate attempts to use "permissive licensed" compilers in past (attempts to use PCC, etc). Yet it worked realy bad unless their corporate overlords from Apple stepped in and wrote more or less decent compiler on their own.

You do realize that MS BASIC was originally designed for the Altair right? That it would come to be used for all of the 70s era home computers... right? MS DOS wouldn't come for another 6 years, and was from a contract by IBM that said We want DOS, this company won't sell DOS to us, Microsoft go procure a DOS variant for us. So Microsoft bought out a company and then over time rewrote all the code.

[SystemCrasher]

You do realize that MS BASIC was originally designed for the Altair right? That it would come to be used for all of the 70s era home computers... right?

And if you failed to notice, these computers also had their system software written in languages other than BASIC. Usually it was assembly or sometimes some parts could be in C. BASIC has always been meant for "lower species" who learn how to program on their kitchen and not going to be serious about using their skills for something big. So BASIC programmers were doomed to stay some second class citizens who are inherently unable to pose any significant competition threat to "real pros" (who made computers and supplied system software). On other hand, when it comes to assembler or C, neither it was supplied by default in most occasions, nor it was something free most of time.

So, being first class citizen of programming world has been quite tricky these days. And often also implied some associated costs. In MSDOS ages it became even worse since proprietary nuts got idea SW worth of some money. So, folly has began. I would call these times worst times I had in sense of my ability to control my environment and do what I would like to do, without being bound by shitload of EULA-style licenses with really weird and sucking terms.

MS DOS wouldn't come for another 6 years, and was from a contract by IBM that said We want DOS, this company won't sell DOS to us, Microsoft go procure a DOS variant for us. So Microsoft bought out a company and then over time rewrote all the code.

Still, these days *nix like systems were for chosen few and if not Stallman and somesuch, world could be far worse place to live in. Fortunately, their funny tricks succeeded and seriously reshaped world landscape. I'm infinitely grateful to those who caused it. RMS included. So now I can use libre compiler, OS and tools around it. I really like it this way. Ability to control my environment matters.

[MoonMoon]

And if you failed to notice, these computers also had their system software written in languages other than BASIC. Usually it was assembly or sometimes some parts could be in C. BASIC has always been meant for "lower species" who learn how to program on their kitchen and not going to be serious about using their skills for something big. So BASIC programmers were doomed to stay some second class citizens who are inherently unable to pose any significant competition threat to "real pros" (who made computers and supplied system software). On other hand, when it comes to assembler or C, neither it was supplied by default in most occasions, nor it was something free most of time.

Ever played Pirates! on a C64? Guess what, parts of one of the most successful games of the times, written by a pro like Sid Meyers, were written in Basic, with the help of Assembler subroutines. The documentation for these pieces of hardware, by the way, was openly available, which lead to the funny situation that at people were able to write their own Assembler in Basic. I have done that just for fun, though Assemblers were widely available for free. At one point an Assembler, written in Basic, even won the 20-liners competition of the German 64'er magazin. Yes, this Basic language meant for the "lower species" was still powerful enough to be able to compress a fully functional Assembler in 20 lines of code. Basic was used for countless games, of course, according to you, all of these games written by "lower species" programmers like Sid Meyers and countless others.

[SystemCrasher]

Ever played Pirates! on a C64?

No, I don't. And some game ... okay, cool. But as you can see, they had to resort to assembly. Should I admit it is really weird to transition between very-low-level assembler and high-level BASIC stuff and they're really different? I think it explains why these days most of serious games usually written in C++, at least core parts. Here you can both have low level features fairly close to assembly and allowing neat tricks, but there're also powerful high-level features.

But if you failed to understand, let me repeat: BASIC is virtually unsuitable for system software development. End of story. So those who give you free BASIC interpreter can be damn sure: you can't use it to compete them for sure. On other hand, C and assembler were valued more thanks to more power they give. And lack of free tools of this class has been a real showstopper. Something RMS successfully fixed with his GCC. That's what really gave green light to serious opensource OS development. Good luck to write multi-tasking, multi-user OS with real API and decent features using BASIC. BASIC is toy programming language. Sure, real pros can write fairly good programs even using stuff like this. But let admit pros can achieve far more if they have adequate tools. GCC example really counts.

Sid Meyers, were written in Basic, with the help of Assembler subroutines. The documentation for these pieces of hardware, by the way, was openly available,

As you can see, overall, this approach miserably failed in favor of C (for system development) and C++ (for gamedev). So mumbling about BASIC is cool. But who uses it these days? OTOH, C still main language of system development. All more or less popular OSes are in C. Not bad for language for 70s, isn't it?

which lead to the funny situation that at people were able to write their own Assembler in Basic.

Theoretically speaking, all Turing-complete programming languages are equivalent. But there is some difference between theory and practice. Theoretically speaking, you can flight to Moon tomorrow. There are no obstacles which could prevent it at fundamental levels. From practical point of view it is highly unlikely to happen though. Same goes for BASIC.

I have done that just for fun, though Assemblers were widely available for free. At one point an Assembler, written in Basic, even won the 20-liners competition of the German 64'er magazin. Yes, this Basic language meant for the "lower species" was still powerful enough to be able to compress a fully functional Assembler in 20 lines of code.

Cool, etc. Except that so much wish to use assembly indicates BASIC lacked appropriate options to deal with low level stuff on its own. And need to select between BASIC and assembler which are really different is not fancy to my taste. Also, assembler writen in 20 lines of BASIC will be a real PITA to use for anyhow serious development efforts and soon will turn into major roadblock. IMHO C was real win in this sense. It is really convenient mix of high or at least mid-range features with some low-level tricks only available on assembly language. If you failed to notice, modern hardware even has been created with C in mind. Be it Atmel AVR or ARM, or even x86-64, they try to be convenient for C compilers in first place.

Basic was used for countless games, of course, according to you, all of these games written by "lower species" programmers like Sid Meyers and countless others.

Gamedevs are inherently "lower species" compared to system devs. I can live without BASIC games for sure. But lack of good operating system would make my life seriously harder on other hand. And if no system dev work has been done at all, you see, booting system by writing all bootstrap code myself could be really daunting task. And obviously you cant use BASIC at this point either.

And if you failed to understand: without system devs you will not take off at all. It is system devs who write some code to turn piece of dead hardware into something more fancy. You see, without them computer would remain dead piece of hardware. And it's not like if you can do this magic in BASIC either. So, those using BASIC are lower species because they absolutely need system devs and system devs can inherently pose some constraints on what lower species can do in particular system.

[MoonMoon]

No, I don't. And some game ... okay, cool. But as you can see, they had to resort to assembly. Should I admit it is really weird to transition between very-low-level assembler and high-level BASIC stuff and they're really different? I think it explains why these days most of serious games usually written in C++, at least core parts. Here you can both have low level features fairly close to assembly and allowing neat tricks, but there're also powerful high-level features.

But if you failed to understand, let me repeat: BASIC is virtually unsuitable for system software development. End of story. So those who give you free BASIC interpreter can be damn sure: you can't use it to compete them for sure. On other hand, C and assembler were valued more thanks to more power they give. And lack of free tools of this class has been a real showstopper. Something RMS successfully fixed with his GCC. That's what really gave green light to serious opensource OS development. Good luck to write multi-tasking, multi-user OS with real API and decent features using BASIC. BASIC is toy programming language. Sure, real pros can write fairly good programs even using stuff like this. But let admit pros can achieve far more if they have adequate tools. GCC example really counts.


As you can see, overall, this approach miserably failed in favor of C (for system development) and C++ (for gamedev). So mumbling about BASIC is cool. But who uses it these days? OTOH, C still main language of system development. All more or less popular OSes are in C. Not bad for language for 70s, isn't it?


Theoretically speaking, all Turing-complete programming languages are equivalent. But there is some difference between theory and practice. Theoretically speaking, you can flight to Moon tomorrow. There are no obstacles which could prevent it at fundamental levels. From practical point of view it is highly unlikely to happen though. Same goes for BASIC.


Cool, etc. Except that so much wish to use assembly indicates BASIC lacked appropriate options to deal with low level stuff on its own. And need to select between BASIC and assembler which are really different is not fancy to my taste. Also, assembler writen in 20 lines of BASIC will be a real PITA to use for anyhow serious development efforts and soon will turn into major roadblock. IMHO C was real win in this sense. It is really convenient mix of high or at least mid-range features with some low-level tricks only available on assembly language. If you failed to notice, modern hardware even has been created with C in mind. Be it Atmel AVR or ARM, or even x86-64, they try to be convenient for C compilers in first place.


Gamedevs are inherently "lower species" compared to system devs. I can live without BASIC games for sure. But lack of good operating system would make my life seriously harder on other hand. And if no system dev work has been done at all, you see, booting system by writing all bootstrap code myself could be really daunting task. And obviously you cant use BASIC at this point either.

And if you failed to understand: without system devs you will not take off at all. It is system devs who write some code to turn piece of dead hardware into something more fancy. You see, without them computer would remain dead piece of hardware. And it's not like if you can do this magic in BASIC either. So, those using BASIC are lower species because they absolutely need system devs and system devs can inherently pose some constraints on what lower species can do in particular system.

You realize that my post was a response to your claim that somehow having a proprietary OS would prevent people from learning programming, which has been proven wrong. Which language is better suited for specific tasks was not the question at all. Nice to way to sidetrack, but anyways, you have been proven wrong, I will leave it here.

[SystemCrasher]

You realize that my post was a response to your claim that somehow having a proprietary OS would prevent people from learning programming,

It could prevent you from learning system programming, obviously. Or at least make it far harder than it should be. Except everything else, it means such people are doomed to be "lower species" since they're unable to control their environment and have to suck balls of some system overlords. Doomed to face unpopular decisions they can't override, etc. That's one of reasons I refer someone like this as "lesser species".

Pretty good examlpe could be Windows and ReactOS as its opensource counterpart. Wrecked kernel, almost no own drivers, etc - that's how ReactOS looks like. MS did really good in killing windows system programming. It mostly worked. Now there're nearly no devs to work on things like ReactOS. Though it worth of nothing for MS - thanks to Linux, etc . Somehow it also backfired and now they faced funny situations like shitty hardware support on ARM devices, etc. Every decision it this world haves its price. MS somehow killed their own mobile future. Nice shot though! Except everything else, Linux supports far more hardware these days. And it wouldn't be possible without bunch of kernel devs. Those system gurus who make magic to happen.

which has been proven wrong. Which language is better suited for specific tasks was not the question at all. Nice to way to sidetrack, but anyways, you have been proven wrong, I will leave it here.

Still, I do not like how gamedevs forced to suck balls of platform/system devs. So they do not have to complain when called "lesser species". Because they are, unless they can control their environment :P. As good example ... Valve seems to be one of first who tired to be just bunch of suckers.

[Luke_Wolf]

It could prevent you from learning system programming, obviously. Or at least make it far harder than it should be. Except everything else, it means such people are doomed to be "lower species" since they're unable to control their environment and have to suck balls of some system overlords. Doomed to face unpopular decisions they can't override, etc. That's one of reasons I refer someone like this as "lesser species".

Pretty good examlpe could be Windows and ReactOS as its opensource counterpart. Wrecked kernel, almost no own drivers, etc - that's how ReactOS looks like. MS did really good in killing windows system programming. It mostly worked. Now there're nearly no devs to work on things like ReactOS. Though it worth of nothing for MS - thanks to Linux, etc . Somehow it also backfired and now they faced funny situations like shitty hardware support on ARM devices, etc. Every decision it this world haves its price. MS somehow killed their own mobile future. Nice shot though! Except everything else, Linux supports far more hardware these days. And it wouldn't be possible without bunch of kernel devs. Those system gurus who make magic to happen.


Still, I do not like how gamedevs forced to suck balls of platform/system devs. So they do not have to complain when called "lesser species". Because they are, unless they can control their environment :P. As good example ... Valve seems to be one of first who tired to be just bunch of suckers.

There's nothing preventing or that ever prevented anyone from learning systems programming, in fact systems programming was quite popular on Commodore using BASIC. I don't know if you're aware but MS BASIC gave one full access to the underlying hardware and system memory through the PEEK and POKE commands, which allowed for a variety of notorious playful hacks.

Further I'd like to point out here that the Borland, Gnu, and Microsoft compilers for C all came out the same year: 1987. Additionally Microsoft published a book which came with a free copy of their compiler, and text editor, as well as an electronic learning system, in 1988 called "Learn C Now". The book itself was rather crappy, but the reality is that you can't accuse Microsoft of trying to prevent people from programming, indeed they've been one of the biggest pushers since the beginning of the personal computer.

[MoonMoon]

It could prevent you from learning system programming, obviously. Or at least make it far harder than it should be. Except everything else, it means such people are doomed to be "lower species" since they're unable to control their environment and have to suck balls of some system overlords. Doomed to face unpopular decisions they can't override, etc. That's one of reasons I refer someone like this as "lesser species".

Pretty good examlpe could be Windows and ReactOS as its opensource counterpart. Wrecked kernel, almost no own drivers, etc - that's how ReactOS looks like. MS did really good in killing windows system programming. It mostly worked. Now there're nearly no devs to work on things like ReactOS. Though it worth of nothing for MS - thanks to Linux, etc . Somehow it also backfired and now they faced funny situations like shitty hardware support on ARM devices, etc. Every decision it this world haves its price. MS somehow killed their own mobile future. Nice shot though! Except everything else, Linux supports far more hardware these days. And it wouldn't be possible without bunch of kernel devs. Those system gurus who make magic to happen.


Still, I do not like how gamedevs forced to suck balls of platform/system devs. So they do not have to complain when called "lesser species". Because they are, unless they can control their environment :P. As good example ... Valve seems to be one of first who tired to be just bunch of suckers.

Meanwhile, the "lesser species" of game developers are part of an industry making billions of dollars while you "superior guy" sit here spouting nonsense on Phoronix.

[TiberiusDuval]

Fluoride in the water supply is what makes it drinkable. Plus people who drink tap water tend to have healthier teeth and bones.

Without fluoride we'd be exposed to a bunch of harmful diseases that flourish in clean tap water. Without fluoride our modern water supply would be impossible. So yeah, I would say that imposing your ideals on everyone for the sake of the lesser community is in fact communism.

Fluoride on water is not necessary for it to be drinkable. Water can be chorinated or be treated with ozone. My water provider chlorinates water. It is not fluoridisized. On our family's summer cottage water on other hand is not treated on any way, it is pumped directly from well, and is perfectly drinkable. adding fluoride to water on other hand is good for teeth...