[Info-vax] C... the only winning move is not to play...

[Paul Sture]

On 2014-02-14, Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP>
> wrote:
> On 2014-02-14, Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> wrote:
>>
>> Some would say that C doesn't have any sense of style at all.
>>
>> It is surely no coincidence that the rise in the popularity of C came in the
>> same timeframe as that of the term "computer nerd" :-)
>>
> Unfortunately, the rise of C is kind of a self-fulfilling feedback loop
> as, given that it's available on such a wide range of platforms (and may
> even be the only viable higher level[*] language option in some
> environments), means that more and more people use it and hence it
> becomes yet more popular.

> [*] PS: Note I said "higher level", not "high level". :-)

(your later correction added)

Yes, I have looked for cross platform alternatives, but C is the only
one that is consistently available.

Also derivatives such as Objective-C, but normal C is still there as an
option on OS X.

> For example, I've got a couple of bare metal projects I am working on
> this weekend and the code for those is written in C (and a bit of ARM
> assembly language) because it's the most viable option especially as
> some of the common code in support libraries runs on a range of
> 8-bit/32-bit architectures.
>
> Ada is available (in various subset forms) for some bare metal ARM work,
> but the freely available tools do not have the maturity the C tools have,
> or the range of different architecture options, unless you are willing to
> pay mega-pounds and/or mega-dollars to have them developed or do the work
> yourself.

Yes I did have a go with the free Adacore offerings, but IIRC they didn't
cover all the platforms I was interested in at the time.

> Doing the work myself would be a interesting, but major, project and
> since I already have hobbyist projects I want to implement, the end
> result is that I tend to use C to implement those bare metal projects.

Understood.

--
Paul Sture