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C Alive and Well Thanks to Portable.NET
rhysweatherley writes "So C is dead
in a world dominated by bytecode languages, is it? Well, not really.
Portable.NET
0.6.4 now has a fairly good C compiler that can compile C to IL bytecode,
to run on top of .NET runtimes. We need some assistance from the community to port glibc in the coming months, but it is coming along fast. The real
question is this: would you rather program against the pitiful number API's that come with C#, or the huge Free Software diversity that you get with C? The death of C has been greatly exaggerated. It will adapt - it always has."
I prommised myself that I will never program in C again. And so far, almost a year now, I am sucseeding in this! I even think that I already forgot what * and & are meaning. In the past, I have programmed many different projects in C, including a very complex embedded system. But when I have the change I will use a modern language like Python. Maybe it is slow(er), but the total time spend is so much less. But that I do not have to tell that to /. right?
Notice that the KDE camp are humming along quite happily with qt and C++. Everyone clamouring for Mono seems to come from the "just C thanks" GNOME community.
We need C like we need more buffer overflow vulnerabilities!
Let the miserable wretch die, or overhaul it to be type safe.
There are some things that are better buried.
It's all just a horrible conspiracy to gradually shift hardware and software towards a centrally controlled, inaccessible quagmire of unbreakable digital rights management and spyware! run for your lives!
Can I compile the kernel with this Portable.Net stuff? Since the most important thing I can think of that is written in C is the Linux kernel I guess it's a good thing that this Portable.Net stuff is here now C is dying. Otherwise we would never be able to cuild a new kernel, I guess!!
Regardless of your true intentions, I'm surprised that you havn't been modded troll of flamebait. (The speeling mistakes, the jingoism...)
Then again, the content of the post will strike a cord with Slashdot arrogance.
Posters recognized by their sig,
String boundary checking SHOULD be a feature of any modern language
Yes, because the programmer can't be bothered to write good code. Give me a break.
or do you enjoy buffer overflow exploits?
Most buffer overflow exploits can be cured by simply not blindly using strcpy() when the data is untrusted, and keeping track of how full your buffer is for non-string arrays.
String buffer overflow avoidance can be as simple as replacing strcpy(dest_buf, src_buf); with strncpy(dest_buf, src_buf, BUF_SIZE-1); *(dest_buf+BUF_SIZE)=0; as long as you don't mind the buffer being truncated.
Of course, you could also do length checking, too, with strlen. Spit out an error or do whatever if it won't fit in the buffer. That's also not hard.
Buffer overflow problems are indicative of a lazy or inattentive programmer. I won't go far as to say that only lazy/inattentive programmers are unhappy with C's lack of string (array, really) boundary checking, but it seems to me that it is really easy to avoid.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
C/C++ will likely never die. The problem with bytecode based languages is that they're *SLOW*.. I repeat *SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW* compared to a good optimized C program.
Now you guys can argue your pants off about how "we've got hotspot" and "hotspot should be just as fast as native", but that's just not the case.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep