There is this one peculiar feature of the culture surrounding C and C++ languages that I am yet to witness anywhere else. JavaScript might just be coming close, but even it isn't there yet. Many - if not most - professional C and C++ programmers treat compiler as their adversary, they also often openly despise compiler writers. How often have you seen someone complaining, that a new version of GCC broke his code? And I do not refer to bugs in the compiler, those may happen in any ecosystem. No, this is a very interesting quality of C and C++, with their rather vague and vacuous description allowing a whole lot of leeway in compiler implementations. This goes in a rather stark contrast with languages like Haskell or the Lisp family, where the compiler is a programmer's best friend, providing a whole lot of insight on the code behaviour.
To add to that, I have also seen a lot of hatred towards the standards of the aforementioned languages from C and C++ programmers, despite these same people praising the idea of their languages being standardised (as opposed to, say, Rust). Most of these specialists have never even bothered to read the standards for their favourite languages. And this results in often dire consequences. To be honest, reading GCC Bugzilla is one of my favourite pastimes, just so much anger is being thrown around.
A article by David Chisnall states that C is actually three different languages. There is the C that programmers know (or they think they know), there is the C as it is described in the standard, and there is the C implemented into compilers. And these are at times rather different languages altogether, with the first one often being completely not like the other two. The point also applies to C++.
THE MARTYR OF BUTLERIAN JIHAD /
npub14z…97yp7
2024-03-16 12:01:15
Author Public Key
npub14zues5n3z7schvkwaausr8q2jsct8pzcncgkp0l5rye4t7ar5rvq397yp7Published at
2024-03-16 12:01:15Event JSON
{
"id": "5c2cc77131994faa328cda2016486ada0d13dc8342346a8a545e32fc331dfb5f",
"pubkey": "a8b998527117a18bb2ceef79019c0a9430b384589e1160bff4193355fba3a0d8",
"created_at": 1710586875,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"proxy",
"https://mstdn.starnix.network/users/icon_of_computational_sin/statuses/112105021486134533",
"activitypub"
]
],
"content": "There is this one peculiar feature of the culture surrounding C and C++ languages that I am yet to witness anywhere else. JavaScript might just be coming close, but even it isn't there yet. Many - if not most - professional C and C++ programmers treat compiler as their adversary, they also often openly despise compiler writers. How often have you seen someone complaining, that a new version of GCC broke his code? And I do not refer to bugs in the compiler, those may happen in any ecosystem. No, this is a very interesting quality of C and C++, with their rather vague and vacuous description allowing a whole lot of leeway in compiler implementations. This goes in a rather stark contrast with languages like Haskell or the Lisp family, where the compiler is a programmer's best friend, providing a whole lot of insight on the code behaviour.\n\nTo add to that, I have also seen a lot of hatred towards the standards of the aforementioned languages from C and C++ programmers, despite these same people praising the idea of their languages being standardised (as opposed to, say, Rust). Most of these specialists have never even bothered to read the standards for their favourite languages. And this results in often dire consequences. To be honest, reading GCC Bugzilla is one of my favourite pastimes, just so much anger is being thrown around.\n\nA article by David Chisnall states that C is actually three different languages. There is the C that programmers know (or they think they know), there is the C as it is described in the standard, and there is the C implemented into compilers. And these are at times rather different languages altogether, with the first one often being completely not like the other two. The point also applies to C++.",
"sig": "a6693715696aa5c519dba6dcf31c2e06741d2cff1a3037971cb8ea1f0f6f3302298ce5b9f91bbc4ea8d0b77c32fab307417288e150eb0e8f1190b16250896931"
}