🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11
For no particular reason, I am feeling nostalgic for Turbo Pascal.
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11
I'm also feeling nostalgic for MPW Pascal, and the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop in general.
I was sad when Apple ditched Pascal for C.
Pascal was not perfect, by any means. I've programmed professionally in Ada, one of Pascal's successors, and liked it pretty well.
I wanted to use Modula 3, "an elegant weapon for a more civilized age," and dabbled in it a little, but there was no market for it.
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11
People sometimes ask what my favorite programming language is. Probably Smalltalk, except that I prefer strong typing, and Smalltalk wants to be its own world, like FORTH, rather than being used to create "native" applications. I usually reply that I have no favorite, because all programming languages suck. Some suck less than others.
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11
C was OK as a systems programming language for the PDP-11 in the 1970s. The minimalism that was absolutely _required_ for that has not been a benefit to good software design practices since the mid-1980s.
As the late, great C.A.R. Hoare said of ALGOL 60, "Here is a language so far ahead of its time that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors but also on nearly all its successors."
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11
When I tell people that I have no favorite programming language, inevitably their next question is what programming languages do I use.
"Mostly C and C++, and some Python. Various others rarely as needed."
Then I'm asked why, especially since I consider C to be terrible.
"The customer is always right."
Show threadGiles GoatMar 11
@brouhaha "Then I'm asked why, especially since I consider C to be terrible." .... BLASPHEMY ! 😎 Well ok it's not as good as C++ but how can you call C "terrible" !?
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11

@gilesgoat
#1 reason: very weak typing without runtime checking

C++ is worse than C! By being an almost-superset of C, it has all of the deficiencies of C, and adds many new ones of its own!

I will, however, admit that modern C++ does make it more practical to avoid the C pitfalls. Unfortunately it can't actually prevent them. The onus is in the programmer to know what to avoid. That's a crock.

Show threadGiles GoatMar 11
@brouhaha .. and yet I think 'those may be reasons to love C too' ... I am getting emotional here 😊
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11

@gilesgoat
C is a good language for a very limited problem domain. The problem is that it gets used for nearly everything, and mostly far outside that limited domain.

C combines some of the power of assembly language with almost all of the danger of assembly language.

Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE
@brouhaha @gilesgoat Are there still people using C? - I haven't had to touch it for decades.
Mar 11 at 8:21pmWeb
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11
@TimWardCam @gilesgoat
Most of the C I'm paid to write is for microcontrollers, either on bare metal, or with a small RTOS like FreeRTOS or Zephyr. Most software I'm paid to write for host computers is in C++ or Python.
Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPEMar 11

@brouhaha @gilesgoat Oh, OK.

One might characterise C as "BCPL, but with the ability to address bytes not just words". From which point of view a microcontroller (where you're counting every single byte of ROM) is indeed a valid use case 🤣

Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11
@TimWardCam @gilesgoat On the other hand, languages like Ada and Rust actually can effectively target small-memory microcontrollers. Ada actually does have facilities for managing bits and bytes (optional, Chapter 13, Representation Specifications, actually more powerful than what C gives you, undefined layout bit fields).
Show threadGiles GoatMar 11
@brouhaha @TimWardCam We have a multi-platform game engine that does graphics, audio, controllers, logic and anything needed that started in C then evolved into C++ , it works as a charm for that kind of application 🥰
Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPEMar 11
@gilesgoat @brouhaha Sure, that was a natural evolution back in the day when Java was so slow that it could only really be considered a serious challenger to Visual Basic.
Show threadGiles GoatMar 11
@TimWardCam @brouhaha My very first ATTEMPT at C believe it or not, was with HiSOFTC ON *TAPE* for ZX Spectrum .. I could NOT compile "Hello World" 😅 My second 'serious' attempt was with Metacomco C on Microdrives on Sinclair QL .. I did something .. FINALLY someone ported C68 for QL on Floppies there I finally started to learn C. Finally my first real paid job we were using C on Motorola 68030/20 machines and I did use it sometime on Vax/VMS .. it all went C since 🙂
Show threadGiles GoatMar 11
@TimWardCam @brouhaha Ah I should said "quite a big part of my job" was to port/write device drivers for various HW .. you may see why I love C that much 🙂
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11
@gilesgoat @TimWardCam
Yes, I've been heavily involved in device drivers and network protocol stacks. C because it was the supported language, and what the customer wanted, not because it was the best language in any.general sense.
Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPEMar 11

@brouhaha @gilesgoat The customer or employer always gets what they want.

Unless it's FORTRAN, which I removed from my CV so that agents would stop phoning me about FORTRAN gigs, or Perl, which I always make clear at interview time that I will absolutely refuse to attempt to read, let alone write.

Show threadGiles GoatMar 11
@TimWardCam @brouhaha Ok "just to say a bit of madness that got into me once" .. once I did open a book .. and my eyes went 😱 😱 😱 ... "I got the thing" as I MUST DO/KNOW something about it .. long story made short I *EVEN* managed to program by hand a whole character set BY HAND for VT220 and modify AND RUN a CP/M version of .. .. APL80 .. yes .. APL .. I remember managing to do a few things .. surprisingly that Z80 version was 'quite fast' .. but yeah "language for Egyptians" 😂 😂
Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPEMar 11
@gilesgoat @brouhaha Nobody ever asked me to do APL so the opportunity to refuse never arose!
Show threadAaron Sawdey, Ph.D.Mar 12
@gilesgoat @TimWardCam @brouhaha If wiki is to be trusted, the first version of APL publicly available ran on the IBM 1130 which was remarkably similar in performance and capability to a typical cp/m machine: 64k bytes max memory, clock speed in the 200-500 kHz range. A 4MHz z80 might even have been faster than it. The xerox 820-II I used a lot had dual single sided double density 8” drives which were (I think) 480kB each so it came close to the 1MB stated disk requirement.
Show threadgunstickMar 12
@gilesgoat @TimWardCam @brouhaha oh come on.
Perl.
I can write perl.
Easy.
I cannot read it, though. 🤣
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 12
@gunstick @gilesgoat @TimWardCam
I can't write it (for anything non-trivial) without also bring able to read it.
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 12
@TimWardCam @gilesgoat
I don't mind Fortran. Maybe I should list it ony résumé.
I'm with you on Perl. I once started.writing a two-pass cross-assembler for HP-21xx minicomputers in Awk. When I got sick of dealing with Awk limitations, someone recommended that I run my code through the Awk-to-Perl translator. I did that, got the assembler working, published as open source, but I.swore to never touch Perl again.
Show threadMike SpoonerMar 12
@TimWardCam @brouhaha @gilesgoat What they want, or what they ask for?
Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPEMar 12

@shelldozer @brouhaha @gilesgoat I follow the Bellman's "what I tell you three times is true".

If an employer/customer asks me to do something stupid I tell them it's stupid. If they say do it anyway I tell them it's stupid again. If they ask a third time then I shut up and do it (unless to do so would break any of the codes of conduct I'm signed up to). They may have good business or political reasons to do something that doesn't make sense technically.

Show threadKen McLeodMar 12
@TimWardCam @shelldozer @brouhaha @gilesgoat "The things I tell you will not be wrong."
Show threadMike SpoonerMar 13
@_the_cloud @TimWardCam @brouhaha @gilesgoat Customer: "Can you print the whole Internet for me to look at later?"
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 13
@shelldozer @_the_cloud @TimWardCam @gilesgoat
Yes, for $100 billion. Delivery will be in multiple monthly deliveries by motor freight.
Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPEMar 11
@gilesgoat @brouhaha I was writing lots of assembler in those days.
Show threadGiles GoatMar 11
@TimWardCam @brouhaha Me too, Motorola 68K asm .. nowadays .. I so far only wrote Z80 and SG2650 asm ( for fun, in the week ends ) 😂
Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPEMar 11
@gilesgoat @brouhaha 8080 then 68K (never did much Z80, just treated it as an 8080). Oh, and one project on 2900 bit slice which was a bit unusual.
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11
@TimWardCam @gilesgoat
I've long been a fan of bit-slice designs and microcoding. I started a low-volume email list on that topic some years back.
Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPEMar 11

@brouhaha @gilesgoat This one was talking to custom hardware - some one-line-of-pixels-at-a-time machine vision device and some stepping motors - in a machine whose job was to quality control microfilm of football pools coupons.

The idea was the photograph all the coupons before the matches were played to guard against people altering coupons once the results were known. As with any paper handling system, particularly one which had to read vast numbers of folded or scrunched up forms in a very short time, the photography process wasn't entirely reliable. The job of this machine was to spot forms or batches that the machine had screwed up or torn and that needed separate handling.

Late 1970s.

Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11
@TimWardCam @gilesgoat
I wrote a lot of assembly from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. For a while beyond that I still wrote assembly for small PIC microcontrollers, and for bare metal startup and interrupt linkage on "real processors". Since the late 1990s, I've only written assembly where absolutely required (increasingly rare), or for esoteric personal projects.
Show thread🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑Mar 11
@gilesgoat @TimWardCam
I'm not saying that it's impossible to build large and useful software systems in C or C++. I'm only saying that there are other languages that can do that even better, with fewer foot guns.
Show threadLars BrinkhoffMar 12
@TimWardCam @brouhaha @gilesgoat Writing C for an automotive ECU right now.