I have met a couple of them in real life, and a few I have met online. The sample is not significant enough to draw any conclusions about their point of view and background.

I am more than interested in your opinions about the personality and political makeup of people who express this type of pro-C bigotry.

    • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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      19 days ago

      It’s crazy to me that people don’t do this, once you’ve learned a few languages you can basically just pick up new ones straight away (assuming they don’t use entirely foreign concepts like Rust does)

      • locuester@lemmy.zip
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        16 days ago

        Rust can be picked up the same way. I was in the situation you describe. Knew a dozen languages. Picked up rust and really enjoy it. It added a dimension to my thinking (ownership). I feel closer to the metal yet safe. That said, it still gets tricky with system design. That’s where it’s a lot harder due to ownership stuff. Just syntax wise it’s not bad tho

        • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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          16 days ago

          It might be because I’d never used C but I really struggled to pick up rust for a month or so until it stopped feeling like

      • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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        19 days ago

        Which foreign concepts do Rust use? The borrow checker/ownership is new but that’s really the only thing that doesn’t already exist in some other language.

        • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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          18 days ago

          The borrow checker, the way it handles exceptions and nulls, the way it handles stack/heap (possibly foreign to me because I’ve never done much on C), composition pattern instead of oop, probably more I’m forgetting

          • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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            18 days ago

            The borrow checker

            This is indeed pretty unique.

            the way it handles exceptions and nulls

            This is really just the fact that Rust has sum types - but those kinds of types have been used in many functional languages (Haskell for example) for a long time.

            the way it handles stack/heap

            This is just the same as C and C++ and any other low-level language that requires you to distinguish between the stack and heap.

            composition pattern instead of oop

            I mean if you’re only looking at OOP languages then this will be new, but functional languages have done this for a long time.

            So yea, I think a big part of what makes Rust great is that it has managed to take these really, really good ideas from functional programming languages and made them work in a language that is not entirely functional. This leads to a perfect blend/best of both worlds with regards to OOP and functional programming :)

            • locuester@lemmy.zip
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              16 days ago

              Yeah it’s just the borrow checker and ownership stuff that throws you for a loop. Particularly with large system design

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    19 days ago

    In my opinion, C purists are people who REALLY need to wash their fucking dishes, touch grass and get some sunlight. They get too worked up because “all the important things are written in C”, the important things being drivers, kernel and most basic stuff that OS needs.

    Whenever one talks about performance, just reply with “use Assembly” and their argument is immediately invalidated. You can also mention networking, fault tolerance and how Erlang does a much better job than C or C++ could do, which is why “real adults with real jobs” created it in the early 90s

    But mostly, it’s ironic that they’re becoming C-Conservatives, blaming the “hot new language” for bringing “the kids”. You can read the same kind of logic and disdain for C programmers, from LISP programmers, in the Unix Hater’s Handbook (1994)

    • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      Nah, I like using C for low level stuff, it balances that it’s reasonably high level and procedural with pretty great performance, size and flexibility. ASM is faster, but you are slower when it comes to understanding someone else’s work.

      For projects that aren’t size or performance sensitive, write it in python or whatever the fuck you like, idgaf.

    • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.mlOP
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      19 days ago

      disdain for C programmers, from LISP programmers, in the Unix Hater’s Handbook (1994)

      I’m definitely looking that up.

  • AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca
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    20 days ago

    Many programmers that work in Low level languages like Assembly or C regard high level languages as easy or slow and thus tended to dis them.

    John Carmack (Doom, Quake engine, considered an amazing programmer) Best Programming Language has a wider appreciation of IDEs and Languages.

  • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    They see the scale of high-level to low-level languages. They see that C is on the human-practical low end of this scale. They ascribe value to being on the low end of the scale. Tada! C is now objectively™ the best language!

  • iii@mander.xyz
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    20 days ago

    The best way to engage them is to ask them about their projects. I usually find them to be very knowledgeable, have a lot to learn from, that you can mix in with your more recent languages.

    Win/win beats calling eachother bigot :)

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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    20 days ago

    C++ is pretty awesome but anyone who thinks a single language is the solution to all problems is dumb… unless you’re smart enough to realize that the one language to rule them all is PHP of course!

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      20 days ago

      If there is anything I’ve learned in my 10+ years as an engineer, it’s that there are no good or bad languages, just pros and cons of each in different applications.

      Except NodeJS. Never use JavaScript on the backend.

      • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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        19 days ago

        If there is anything I’ve learned in my 10+ years as an engineer, it’s that there are no good or bad languages, just pros and cons of each in different applications.

        I dunno if I agree really - the more languages I’ve learned, the more I see an evolution from less sophisticated, less usable languages to more sophisticated, more usable, modern and just generally better languages.

        C and C++ are old, and you can tell. There’s so much complexity and legacy in those languages that it’s crazy. But it’s not just legacy - it’s also bad design choices. There’s a lot of really bad APIs and bad usability and footguns everywhere. You see the same thing in languages like JavaScript (whose design journey has been fraught with peril). Even Java has some bad stuff I would say, mostly from the overzealous insistence on OOP.

        However, if you look at some modern languages that were more deliberately designed, you really start to see how they are just intrinsically better. Python, while still being a dynamically typed scripting language which I would never use for large systems, is still leagues better than JavaScript in terms of design and usability I would say. Haskell was born from research and you can really tell - the language just makes sense in a very scientific way - although that does mean ease of use and developer experience has not always been the priority.

        Rust was developed for a very particular purpose, basically to provide the same speed as C++ but without any undefined behavior. From that design principle, a lot of good has resulted and Rust is basically an objectively better language than C++. The only thing still keeping C++ in the game is the historical reasons, just due to the sheer amount of code that exists out there in C++. C++ has more support in all kinds of places, but that’s just due to history and Rust will likely gain ground soon enough. For instance, C++ still rules for game development, but this could change within the next 5 or 10 years.

        It’s not that surprising when you think about - languages like Python, Haskell and Rust were built on the giant pile of experience the whole industry has amassed from using previous languages. It also helps that we just have more computing power today to make languages like Rust feasible. Rust compile times probably wouldn’t have been realistic 30 years ago.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      19 days ago

      I hope that last part wasn’t a joke at PHP’s expense.

      I am actually surprised what PHP can do over the past few years. We converted a few critical REST APIs into PHP and it wasn’t just lightning fast, it’s also incredibly readable that we had non-PHP developers convinced it was the right move.

      • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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        19 days ago

        It wasn’t, I think PHP is legitimately an excellent language for readability and expressiveness.