It explicitly says in the post... for example static analyzers. What is the "Frama-C" equivalent of any language that bills itself as a replacement / competitor of C?
> Most of these "new C" languages use the same backend as a C compiler.
Most of them use LLVM as far as I know, which does not target plenty of obscure platforms.
So the argument is we need the bug finders we've developed for C (because our C is full of bugs)?
> Most of them use LLVM as far as I know, which does not target plenty of obscure platforms.
Yeah, writing software in the old language is more convenient on obscure, rare, niche platforms, because it's older than dirt. More chicken and egg nonsense. It's not impossible to have LLVM add additional targets, right?
> Yeah, writing software in the old language is more convenient because it's older than dirt. More chicken and egg nonsense. It's not impossible to have LLVM add additional targets, right?
It seems like you're being needlessly hostile. There is nothing personal about this discussion, and it's not nonsense. I write embedded software that needs to run on PIC18 microcontrollers. Support for that in LLVM was dropped about 8 years ago. Do you think it's reasonable to say to someone "just add a new LLVM target, it's not literally impossible"?
I'm profoundly disappointed. This article's reasoning is not good.
> Do you think it's reasonable to say to someone "just add a new LLVM target, it's not literally impossible"?
No, but that C is already pervasive because it's been around 50 years isn't a case "against an alternative to C" as much as it is a headwind. That's fair. C has a massive head start and no one should discount that. But I'm not exactly certain that was the argument he was making.
This conversation is about general use of C vs alternatives such as Rust.
If you can't use Rust because of your specific circumstances that's ok - use C! But don't use "my current circumstances prevent me from using Rust" as an argument as an argument against Rust in general - which is what you're doing.
> But don't use "my current circumstances prevent me from using Rust" as an argument as an argument against Rust in general - which is what you're doing.
First of all I'm just summarizing the article, I'm in no way arguing against people using Rust. The article itself argues against C alternatives, and explicitly describes Rust as a C++ alternative. So the article is not even arguing against Rust! If we can't agree on such a basic reading of the article, it just seems like we're going to pointlessly talk past each other in the comments.
It explicitly says in the post... for example static analyzers. What is the "Frama-C" equivalent of any language that bills itself as a replacement / competitor of C?
> Most of these "new C" languages use the same backend as a C compiler.
Most of them use LLVM as far as I know, which does not target plenty of obscure platforms.