On 2026-01-07 23:49, rbowman wrote:

On Wed, 7 Jan 2026 13:30:14 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2026-01-06 19:57, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2026-01-06, Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> wrote:

On 2026-01-06, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

My C teacher said it was a mistake to use C as an all purpose
language, like for userland applications. Using C is the cause of
many bugs that a proper language would catch.

That was around 1991.

He knew. He participated in some study tasked by the Canadian
government to study C compilers, but he could not talk about what
they wrote.

What language(s) did he suggest instead?

I don't remember if he did. Maybe he told samples, but I think he mostly
told us of quirks of the language, things that were errors, but that the
compiler did not signal, so that we being aware we would write correct C
code.

It is possible that current C compilers signal many more problems that
back then, but not runtime errors.

gcc has become pickier. That isn't always a welcome thing when working
with legacy code and requires a search of the compiler options to get it
to shut up about such horrible heresies as assuming a function returns an int.

If the code were mine, I would correct the code. Even back then, I did
not take the assumption that a function would return an integer :-D

I wrote explicit prototypes in the header file. :-)


If the code is not mine, I would use the compiler options instead.
Unless I got paid to maintain that code, then I would correct the code.

--
Cheers, Carlos.
ES??, EU??;

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, 12 Jan 2026 15:44:56 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:

If the code were mine, I would correct the code. Even back then, I
did not take the assumption that a function would return an integer
:-D

That?s why they call it ?technical debt?. And yes, like any debt, it
incurs interest -- compound interest, even ...

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Carlos E.R. wrote this post by blinking in Morse code:

On 2026-01-07 23:49, rbowman wrote:

On 2026-01-06 19:57, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

<snip>

It is possible that current C compilers signal many more problems that
back then, but not runtime errors.

Gcc will tag things that could cause a run-time error, such as
parameters that don't match the specifiers in a printf() call.

gcc has become pickier. That isn't always a welcome thing when working
with legacy code and requires a search of the compiler options to get it
to shut up about such horrible heresies as assuming a function returns an
int.

I periodically also build projects using clang. Clang and gcc each
catch some problems that the other does not catch.

If the code were mine, I would correct the code. Even back then, I did
not take the assumption that a function would return an integer :-D

I wrote explicit prototypes in the header file. :-)

If the code is not mine, I would use the compiler options instead.
Unless I got paid to maintain that code, then I would correct the code.

Don't fix what ain't broke, you might break it [1] :-D

[1] I'm speaking from experience.

--
You can observe a lot just by watching. -- Yogi Berra

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)