Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

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It was an observation, not suggestion.

When the language standardization body has not managed to add arrays with length in 48 years, I don't think it should be added at this point. The culture is backward looking and incompatible with modern needs and people involved are old and incompatible with the future (no offense, so am I).

C standardization effort should focus on finishing the language, not developing it to match modern world. I have programmed with C over 20 years, since I was a teenager. It's has long been the system programming language I'm most familiar with. For the last 10 years I have never written an executable. Just short callable functions from other languages. Python, Java, Common Lisp, Matlab, and 'horrors or horrors' C++.

I think Standard C's can live next 50 years in gradual decline as portable assembler called from other languages and compilation target.

If I would propose new extension to C language, I would propose completely new language that can be optionally compiled into C and works side by side with old C code.

> If I would propose new extension to C language, I would propose completely new language that can be optionally compiled into C and works side by side with old C code.

There are a few somewhat popular languages that fit that description already, and none of them are suitable replacements for C (as far as I've seen). That's not to say there couldn't be a suitable replacement -- just that nobody in a position to do something about it wants the suitable replacement enough for it to have emerged, apparently.

I suspect the first really suitable complete replacement for C would be something like what Checked C [1] tried to be, but a little more ambitious and willing to include wholly new (but perhaps backward-compatible) features (like some of those you've proposed) implemented in an interestingly new enough way to warrant a whole new compile-to-C implementation. Something like that could greatly improve the use cases where a true C replacement would be most appreciated, and still fit "naturally" into environments where C is already the implementation language of choice via a piecemeal replacement strategy where the first step is just using the new language's compiler as the project compiler front end's drop-in replacement (without having to make any changes to the code at all for this first step).

1: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/checked-c/

Sounds like you are describing Zig. https://ziglang.org

I haven't looked at Zig too closely yet (only started just a few minutes ago), but it immediately appears to me that this violates one of the requirements I suggested, as demonstrated by this use-case wish from my previous comment:

> > using the new language's compiler as the project compiler front end's drop-in replacement (without having to make any changes to the code at all for this first step)

I'll look into Zig more, though. Maybe I'll like it.

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I stand corrected, given my phrasing. I should have specified that it needs to also support incrementally adding the new language's features while most of the code is still unaltered C, rather than (for instance) having to suddenly replace all the includes and function prototypes just because you want to add (in the case of Zig) an error "catch" clause.

You can use the Zig compiler to compile C with no modifications, and easily call C from Zig or Zig from C, so I'm not sure what more you're hoping for. A language that allows you to mix standard C and "improved C" in the same file sounds like a mess to me.

It depends on whether you're talking about an actual whole new, radically different language or something that is essentially C "with improvements". My point is not that C "with improvements" is the ideal approach, only that (at this time, for almost purely social reasons) I don't think C is really subject to replacement except by something that allows you to mix standard C and the "new language" because, apart from specific improvements, they are the same language.

This might come with huge drawbacks, but it still seems like the only socially acceptable way to fully replace C at this time; make it so you can replace it one line of code at a time in existing projects.

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