Simplicity has a future

[jacob navia]

A recent article on CNN described the problem that phone makers
are facing.

(http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/biztech....ap/index.html)

Most people are rejecting the new "supercharg ed"
cell phones because they just do not want to learn the
incredible complex menus and stuff that you need to use them.

The new phones are just too complicated to use.

The same thing is happening with programming languages too.

Extremey complicated languages like C++ are loosing ground to more
simpler languages. People get tired of trying to learn a
monster language where learning the language gets in the way
of the basic needs of the user. You use a language to do something,
and when you have to learn too much stuff or the learning curve
is too steep, a simpler language wins.

This means for C, that C (contrary to what many people think)
has a good opportunity to attract new users. Being a much
simpler language it is the language of choice when you want something
that works without a lot of effort.

This could explain why the download rate of the lcc-win32 compiler
that offers only C stays since several years high. In this month
we have a mean download rate of around 300-400 per day at one of
our sites, probably more at the main downloading site.

[Tomás]

jacob navia posted:

Extremey complicated languages like C++ are loosing ground to more
simpler languages.

I'd expect such an argument from a Java programmer, or a C# programmer,
but it doesn't make much sense coming from a C programmer. A lot of C
programs can be simplified by injecting some C++ into them. Just look at
"string" and "vector".

I'm a C++ programmer. I know it inside out. I can make it do what I want
it to do. I made the choice to learn more "fancy" features, and it has
paid off.

The reason why C++ has waned in popularity is because way way WAY more
people are trying to program now than a few years ago. Intelligent and
intellectual people are in the minority, and therefore dumbed-down
languages like Java, Visual Basic and C# have seen a growth in
popularity.

Make a distinction between "mickey-mouse programmer" and "real
programmer" and then you'll see a meaningful trend.

I see C++ as a superset of C. Why would I restrict myself to only using C
feaures?
It's very well known that C compilers are far more common than C++
compilers, so it's much easier to find a C compiler for a given platform
than a C++ compiler. If I can't find a decent C++ compiler for a
platform, then I'll write C. Otherwise, I'll write C++.
-Tomás

[spibou]

jacob navia wrote:

This means for C, that C (contrary to what many people think)
has a good opportunity to attract new users. Being a much
simpler language it is the language of choice when you want something
that works without a lot of effort.

I never had any doubts that C *is* attracting new users and will
continue to do so.
I go to linuxforums and everytime some newbie asks what programming
language
to start with a lot of people suggest C. Same thing happened on a
non-computer
related message board.

People like C for many reasons one of which is that they enjoy
programming "close
to the metal" even if it's not required by the application. The only
way I see C disappearing
is that a drastic change in computer hardware happens.

[Richard Heathfield]

sp****@gmail.co m said:

The only way I see C disappearing
is that a drastic change in computer hardware happens.

The C language, being so amenable to portable programming, is well-placed to
meet the challenge of such a change.

--
Richard Heathfield
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29/7/1999
http://www.cpax.org.uk
email: rjh at above domain (but drop the www, obviously)

[Keith Thompson]

jacob navia <ja***@jacob.re mcomp.fr> writes:
[snip]

This means for C, that C (contrary to what many people think)
has a good opportunity to attract new users. Being a much
simpler language it is the language of choice when you want something
that works without a lot of effort.
I wouldn't call C "simple". A simple language wouldn't require so
much care and expertise to avoid serious pitfalls such as the many
cases of undefined behavior.

Your "contrary to what many people think" remark seems to be typical
of your peristent misunderstandin g of the opinions of most other
people in this newsgroup.
This could explain why the download rate of the lcc-win32 compiler
that offers only C stays since several years high. In this month
we have a mean download rate of around 300-400 per day at one of
our sites, probably more at the main downloading site.

lcc-win32 does not offer "only C". It apparently does support
standard C (I don't know how well), but it also supports some other
language consisting of C with a number of extensions. There might be
some interesting point to make about the popularity of your extended C
language vs. another extended C language called "C++", but this
wouldn't be the place to make that point.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keit h) ks***@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center <*> <http://users.sdsc.edu/~kst>
We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.

[Clever Monkey]

Tomás wrote:

jacob navia posted:

Extremey complicated languages like C++ are loosing ground to more
simpler languages.
I'd expect such an argument from a Java programmer, or a C# programmer,
but it doesn't make much sense coming from a C programmer. A lot of C
programs can be simplified by injecting some C++ into them. Just look at
"string" and "vector".

I'm a C++ programmer. I know it inside out. I can make it do what I want
it to do. I made the choice to learn more "fancy" features, and it has
paid off.

The reason why C++ has waned in popularity is because way way WAY more
people are trying to program now than a few years ago. Intelligent and
intellectual people are in the minority, and therefore dumbed-down
languages like Java, Visual Basic and C# have seen a growth in
popularity.

Perhaps, though Java may also be successful because it is less a
language than a development and deployment framework. This makes it
possible for a company like mine to support such a wide variety of
platforms.

C++ (or C, for that matter) does not have to preclude easy porting to
new platforms, but it sure is easy for a code base to become less and
less portable over time. Even adding another Unix platform was more
than a modest undertaking, and was actually a "port". Now we make sure
the small amount of JNI and native code we have builds, and the
classfiles that make up the bulk of the world go right to QA. A
developer does a "port" simply by being a tech lead for QA if anything
comes up. It rarely does. So, a "port" is often hours and days now,
instead of weeks or months.

We sort of were bitten by C++ during the transition stage when the
language was still being standardized. All those different compilers
(this was before GCC was available/reasonable on all the platforms we
needed) on all those different platforms was a real pain to maintain.
Condition compilation ruled the day, and it was not fun. To this day I
still have nightmares about all the contortions necessary to get STL
based code to build cleanly on different Unix platforms.

There may be issues between platform VMs of the same version, but this
is pretty rare. By and large maintenance has been much easier with Java.

All these issues are in many senses removed from the language itself.
The large apps I work on now are best treated as a collection of
middleware and frameworks than source code half the time (though we
write plenty of code).
Make a distinction between "mickey-mouse programmer" and "real
programmer" and then you'll see a meaningful trend.

I thought real programmers programmed in hex, on a seven-segment readout
with a keypad?

[jacob navia]

Tomás wrote:

The reason why C++ has waned in popularity is because way way WAY more
people are trying to program now than a few years ago. Intelligent and
intellectual people are in the minority, and therefore dumbed-down
languages like Java, Visual Basic and C# have seen a growth in
popularity.

Make a distinction between "mickey-mouse programmer" and "real
programmer" and then you'll see a meaningful trend.

Look Tomas,
you should restrain from insulting other people just because they refuse
to learn all the complexities of C++.

No. They aren't "mickey-mouse" programmers but real programmers that
want to use a programming language to do a specific JOB. Period.

If you read the article that I quoted in CNN, people do not reject the
"modern" hypercomplex phones just because they are lazy but because they
want to USE a phone for what is intended: communicate by phone with
other people. PERIOD.

C++, because of the very high learning curve, stays in the way of people
doing the JOB they want to do with the language.

C has less surprises, less to learn, and uses FAR LESS MEMORY.

Not only RAM, that nobody cares too much, but HUMAN MEMORY, a far more
precious resource than RAM!

The memory footprint of a language is the amount of data your brain
must load into your neural network to be able to use that language
efficiently.

The memory footprint of C++ is enormous. C++ specifications run down for
pages and pages, and basically, it is impossible for a human mind
to follow the complexities of name resolution without using the
debugger. The C++ name resolution for overloaded operators runs for
several pages of specifications and imply a topological sort of the
class hierarchy. Which human mind can do that without having a machine
(compiler) at hand?

People that reject a language where they can't possibly know what
are they calling, aren't stupid. The contrary is true. They just
follow the KISS principle!

KEEP IT SIMPLE!

jacob
jacob

[jacob navia]

Keith Thompson a écrit :

jacob navia <ja***@jacob.re mcomp.fr> writes:
[snip]

This means for C, that C (contrary to what many people think)
has a good opportunity to attract new users. Being a much
simpler language it is the language of choice when you want something
that works without a lot of effort.

I wouldn't call C "simple". A simple language wouldn't require so
much care and expertise to avoid serious pitfalls such as the many
cases of undefined behavior.

*Any* language has its "gotchas".. . C's aren't specially difficult
to see with a little bit of care. Granted, it is a language
that is close to the machine, and supposes more care when
programming than Java or C#.

Your "contrary to what many people think" remark seems to be typical
of your peristent misunderstandin g of the opinions of most other
people in this newsgroup.

I do not see why you feel that this was directed against people
in this group...

:-)

I was speaking against many people that see C as a dead language
or kind of low level assembler that doesn't even earn the
name "high level language". For instance, just read
Betrand Meyer and ist Object Oriented Software construction book.

This could explain why the download rate of the lcc-win32 compiler
that offers only C stays since several years high. In this month
we have a mean download rate of around 300-400 per day at one of
our sites, probably more at the main downloading site.

lcc-win32 does not offer "only C". It apparently does support
standard C (I don't know how well), but it also supports some other
language consisting of C with a number of extensions. There might be
some interesting point to make about the popularity of your extended C
language vs. another extended C language called "C++", but this
wouldn't be the place to make that point.

Maybe, but most people are attracted by the easy of use. I do
not think people are attracted just by the language extensions. You see,
the compiler is very simple, the IDE also, to make a project you select
a bunch of files in the IDE and that is it.

EASY OF USE. This is a fundamental point that we forget too often when
adding that gazillon options...

I have resisted to make the IDE more complicated. It
has a user interface unchanged since windows 3.1.

Like the language it supports, everything is small, straightforward .
You do not have a XXX "Studio", the IDE is just 800K, complete with
spelling checker, software metrics, and many other options that
"advanced" IDEs do not offer.

Simple but powerful, as the language it supports.

[SuperKoko]

jacob navia wrote:

A recent article on CNN described the problem that phone makers
are facing.

(http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/biztech....ap/index.html)

Most people are rejecting the new "supercharg ed"
cell phones because they just do not want to learn the
incredible complex menus and stuff that you need to use them.

The new phones are just too complicated to use.

The same thing is happening with programming languages too.

Extremey complicated languages like C++ are loosing ground to more
simpler languages. People get tired of trying to learn a
monster language where learning the language gets in the way
of the basic needs of the user. You use a language to do something,
and when you have to learn too much stuff or the learning curve
is too steep, a simpler language wins.
If you try to program advanced software in C, you'll see that the
complexity which is not in the C language, will be found in the C code.
At a higher maintainibility cost than if it was programmed in a
language supporting advanced features.
In fact, learning C or C++ depends on what you want to do.
If you want to write device drivers, you'll see that most features of
C++ are not really possible to use. You can still write the program in
C++, but you will write it in a C-style way.
So, if you only want to write device drivers, you don't have to learn
C++. You can learn C only.
But if you want to write applications which require runtime
polymorphism, or benefit from generic containers, or simply need to use
a lot of object-based libraries (such as bignums libraries) or expose a
lot of objects (not necessarily with inheritance), or even simply uses
so much dynamic allocation that RAII + exceptions is absolutely
necessary for a correct program (I mean a program which doesn't crash
even if any constructor fails), then C++ is much safer, and easier to
write.
Try to write OOP with GObject in C, and you'll see that C++ would be
better for that task.

This means for C, that C (contrary to what many people think)
has a good opportunity to attract new users. Being a much
simpler language it is the language of choice when you want something
that works without a lot of effort.
Yes, simplicity attracts people.
As far as people use only simple things, they are happy, and there have
no reason of learning a complex language.
But when they write complex things, they realize that a complex
language in fact helps a lot, and simplifies their program.

wrote jacob navia: The memory footprint of C++ is enormous. C++ specifications run down for
pages and pages, and basically, it is impossible for a human mind
to follow the complexities of name resolution without using the
debugger.

Perhaps your mind.
But my mind knows pretty well the C++ standard.

And, if you read the C99 standard, you'll see that C is not so simple
that it seems to be (even if it is simplier than C++).

For instance, there are common pitfalls, if you think that C is too
close to the machine.
You have to learn the C standard if you want to write portable
software, otherwise you may use casts in a non-portable way... Read the
C standard, and you'll see that there are lots of undefined behaviors
which seems to work perfectly fine on common platforms (x86, PowerPC),
but might fail on weird platforms.

[Malcolm]

"Richard Heathfield" <in*****@invali d.invalid> wrote

sp****@gmail.co m said:

The only way I see C disappearing
is that a drastic change in computer hardware happens.

The C language, being so amenable to portable programming, is well-placed
to
meet the challenge of such a change.

The C language is, the C standard isn't.

For instance say I have invented a very cheap analogue memory. It will store
256 levels of resolution with enough accuracy to make it acceptable for
everyday data, but there is just a slight chance of a shift from one level
to another.
But we can get round this with a bit of AI. If a word reads "exactky" the AI
will correct it to "exactly". Or buy "1* eggs" becomes "buy 12 eggs",
because of course I am not stupid enough to use an encoding where digits are
contiguous and "buy 12 eggs" could slip undetectable to "buy 11 eggs".
Oh whoops. there goes the standard.
--
Buy my book 12 Common Atheist Arguments (refuted)
$1.25 download or $7.20 paper, available www.lulu.com/bgy1mm