Hacker News Reader

Comment by malkia | Hacker News Reader

C with a decent dynamic language (C + Lua for example) make a better choice, than C++. Or Objective C, or C+Python, C+Perl, C+WhateverElseDynamic.

View on HN

There's also a place for some C with sugar languages - OOC, Vala, etc.

A few of those work well starting from C, like: C + Lua or Objective-C

For most of the rest it's possible to start in C and link in the language runtime, it's much easier to start in the runtime and extend it with C modules. From experience this is especially true for Python: I've used both ctypes and SWIG to turn the guts of existing native programs into Python libraries. I'm sure it's probably the case for Ruby and Perl as well.

You could also just use Go by itself :)

Why?

You can write the stuff that needs to access system calls, deal with hardware, heavy number crunching, etc. in C, but use a language with garbage collection, real strings, and a REPL for all the stuff that doesn't need to be chiseled out of diamond (and will probably change, anyway). For many things, slow prototypes are good enough. When you could do 95% of a project quickly in Python/Lua/Ruby/etc., writing everything in C anyway has the same downsides as any other form of premature optimization.

As a bonus, the border between the two languages often settles along conceptual seams in the codebase -- your low-level graphics rendering code shouldn't be tangled up with your enemy AI or UI templates, for example.

Rather than writing everything in a language that tries to do everything and winds a mess (C++), you can use two smaller, more focused languages.

Ah, my mistake. I thought you were contrasting C+Lua with all the other C+language pairs, C+Lua with C+C++.

The comment was by someone else, but I think he/she meant C paired with any dynamic language vs. C++ alone, not C with Lua specifically.

C++ with a decent dynamic language beats the crap out of C with a decent dynamic language. Chaiscript is a great project.

You would take your C+Python app and rewrite the C bits in C++ and find it shorter and clearer and the same speed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com