Some years ago I stumbled over this interesting article about C being the most effective of programming language and one making the least false promises. Essentially Damien Katz argues that the simplicity of C and its flaws lead to simple, fast and easy to reason about code.

C is the total package. It is the only language that’s highly productive, extremely fast, has great tooling everywhere, a large community, a highly professional culture, and is truly honest about its tradeoffs.

-Damien Katz about the C Programming language

I am Java developer most of the time but I also have reasonable experience in C, C++, C#, Groovy and Python and some other languages to a lesser extent. Damien’s article really made me think for quite some time about the languages I have been using. I think he is right in many aspects and has really good points about the tools and communities around the languages.

After quite some thought I do not completely agree with him.

My take on C

At a time I really liked the simplicity of C. I wrote gtk2hack in my spare time as an exercise and definitely see interoperability and a quick “build, run, debug”-cycle as big wins for C. On the other hand I think while it has a place in hardware and systems programming many other applications have completely different requirements.

• A standardized ABI means nothing to me if I am writing a service with a REST/JSON interface or a standalone GUI application.
• Portability means nothing to me if the target system(s) are well defined and/or covered by the runtime of choice.
• Startup times mean nothing to me if the system is only started once every few months and development is still fast because of hot-code replacement or other means.
• etc.

But I am really missing more powerful abstractions and better error handling or ressource management features. Data structures and memory management are a lot more painful than in other languages. And this is not (only) about garbage collection!

Especially C++ is making big steps in the right direction in the last few years. Each new standard release provides additional features making code more readable and less error prone. With zero cost abstractions at the core of language evolution and the secondary aim of ease of use I really like what will come to C++ in the future. And it has a very professional community, too.

Aims for the C++11 effort:

• Make C++ a better language for systems programming and library building
• Make C++ easier to teach and learn

-Bjarne Stroustup, A Tour of C++

What we can learn from C

Instead of looking down at C and pointing at its flaws we should look at its strengths and our own weaknesses/flaws. All languages and environments I have used to date have their own set of annoyances and gotchas.

Java people should try building simple things and having a keen eye on dependencies especially because the eco system is so rich and crowded. Also take care of ressource management – the garbage collector is only half the deal.

Scala and C++ people should take a look at ABI stability and interoperability in general. Their compile times and “build, run, debug”-cycle has much room for improvement to say the least.

C# may look at simplicity instead of wildly adding new features creating a language without opinion. A plethora of ways implementing the same stuff. Either you ban features or you have to know them all to understand code in a larger project.

Conclusion

My personal answer to the title of this blog: Yes, they make false promises. But they have a lot to offer, too.

So do not settle with the status quo of your language environment or code style of choice. Try to maintain an objective perspective and be aware of the weaknesses of the tools you are using. Most platforms improve over time and sometimes you have to re-evaluate your opinion regarding some technology.

I prefer C++ to C for some time now and did not look back yet. But I also constantly try different languages, platforms and frameworks and try to maintain a balanced view. There are often good reasons to choose one over the other for a particular project.