Originally posted by cynical
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How is C lacking? C is by far the most powerful language (C++ can also be, though) because you can code almost anything with it. I mean, wait, we ARE talking about the quality of the END PRODUCT are we not? You know, the whole article is about resource hungriness of the end product, not "programmer convenience" or whatever other reasons are always parroted about the "shiny new languages".
Because you know, real programmers code for the quality of their product, because end users don't give a shit how "maintainable" something is for monkeys, but if the application offers NOTHING of value compared to another and yet uses 10 times more RAM and is slow as piss, they know it's garbage. What is the point of having 10 times more products because of "accessible languages" for non-real programmers, all being bloated, instead of 1 quality product that is 10 times leaner where they could contribute to in a proper language like C? That's what I meant with 90% of products dying off. It's all about quality over quantity.
And I'm not even close to being as pedantic as Linus in respect to trashing "modern languages", he even hates C++, which I don't (except the over-use of the standard library, GCC for example has pretty decent C++ usage, which is more like C in usage).
Do you know why C doesn't evolve much? Because it's a stable, well-designed language that only needs a few new features once a decade or so. Yeah, there are some things it lacks, mostly compile-time capabilities (which C++ has an abundance of), but those are just for convenience. They won't optimize the code better or enable a leaner end product, since you can do those with scripting languages.
Yes, scripting languages have their uses, such as in production or compilations or whatever. But deploying them? Most users will never touch them, what a waste really. Unless your target audience is supposed to script their own stuff, of course. I'm sure the average GNOME user cares so much about scripting in JS.
tl;dr It's better to have 1 lean and super optimized project doing one thing and doing it right, than 10 of them with 9 being extremely bloated compared to how they should be. Imagine if someone wrote basic UNIX utilities like 'cat' in a scripting language, would you use it, what is the point of it when you have 'cat' written in C?!??
Yes it's harder and slower to code in C, that's why it's quality over quantity. If people didn't waste their time with their fragmentation and redundant projects but instead learned how to code and contributed to pure C code, it wouldn't really be any slower in the end.
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