Re: OT: Programming Languages

On 2024-11-01, Cursitor Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the
rest; I'll stick with that.

Pretty much agree.

I prefer to write in what I call "C+", using some of the extra features of C++
but without all the insane template metaprogramming. Classes are useful for
structure, and things like std::string and std::map really help simplify the
higher-level operations (though it feels dirty knowing that clever one-liner
is about to generate 1000's of instructions), but, as said elsewhere, there
can be too much magic in other peoples code - that innocuous '}' can end up
running yards of code in destructors, and you can't always trust the simple
things like '+', as they may have been subverted to do all kinds of stuff.

A C++ purist would choke on my code - std::maps here and
*((unsigned char *) reg_ptr) = 0x34; there!

For scripting I like bash (or sh+, to continue the nomenclature), and perl.

"If you're mostly manipulating files, use bash, if you're mostly manipulating
the content of files, use perl. If you're tickling the hardware, use C[+] or
asm".

I still write a lot of PIC asm, and think anyone who wants to use a HLL on a
low-powered mirocontroller with less than 1K of RAM/ROM is an idiot.

javascript is nice for client-side browser code. I tend to write it like C,
and won't touch any of the frameworks like node.js though.

I once wrote a FORTH compiler (or interpreter, as some people view it), and
a bunch of software using it, for a specific project. A bit too write-only
for my liking now.

BASIC-PLUS (the RSTS-E flavour) was my first serious high level language,
but I avoided most of the brain damage by already being fluent in machine
code (as in typing in the hex) and assembler. Pascal was forced on us at
uni, but as a hardware / low level guy it was frustrating the you couldn't
really do anything useful with it (I didn't consider writing yet another
sort or factorial algorithm "useful").

COBOL sort-of pays my wages, but I couldn't write a word of it. I work on
the software emulation of the ancient mainframe architecture that still
runs a lot of high-value business applications.

Java, python, ruby, c#, rust and all other the modern shit can just [go away]
as far as I'm concerned - they're all non-solutions to the wrong problems.

Now where's my soldering iron...

--
Ian

"Tamahome!!!" - "Miaka!!!"