Ask HN: Who is using C?

8 points00taffe9mo ago8 comments

I'm a senior web developer that sometimes struggle with the over complicated stuck full of dependences that hide how the real technology works.

Sometimes I would like to do a step back and simplify the way I work, basically using just a few tools / language that have less ideas but that the power to do big things!

C is a language that can be easily to understand but very very difficult to master.

I'm very curious to knwo who is using it and for what!

Thank you :)

8 comments

dyingkneepad9mo ago

I am.

C is still highly used for low-level system software development: OS stuff like drivers, libraries, compilers, databases, software that runs in specialized small hardware, etc. C++ is for those slightly-higher abstractions that still require a lot of performance, like video-games and some of the former. Some stuff is getting very slowly replaced by Rust, but it will still take a long time for Rust to corrode the C/C++ market share in the lowest level stuff.

khedoros19mo ago

A big chunk of the codebase I work on is C. "Distributed storage server" would be a fair description of the product. There's C for a lot of the nitty-gritty of the operation, going down into driver-level stuff. There's C++ for a lot of the higher-level business logic and system management. Then a bunch of code that's an unholy mix of the two.

Rochus9mo ago

I'm using C89 and C99 very often, mostly for embedded system. Since you're a web developer, you're used to garbage collected languages. C is very bare-bone in comparison and you have to take care of details you never had to with your stack. So I think you should rather go for a language like Go, which is still pretty bare-bone compared to e.g. TypeScript with the usual tools and libraries, but still more familiar to what you are used to.

runjake9mo ago

It's worth learning C. I don't think you need to master it to get a lot of value from it. Consider using C on embedded platforms like esp32, if you want a more "simple" introduction.

https://learnxinyminutes.com/c/

codr79mo ago

I am, occasionally, mostly to implement interpreters these days.

But I did spent an awful lot of time in C lately while writing this book:

https://github.com/codr7/hacktical-c

smt889mo ago

You're not looking for C. You want to try Go, Java, C#, or Kotlin.

disattention9mo ago

This is a silly comment, and missing content that would make it helpful. At least say why you think these things are better than C. They want a language that allows them to explore the depths of systems, so they may very well want C or similar.

Please try to be more helpful and less presumptive, especially when someone is asking to learn.

smt889mo ago

They're not trying to explore the "depths of the system". They're tired of the many layers of transformation and build steps in web dev.

Those are kind of unavoidable if you want to package your code for multiple browsers, but with the languages above, you at least only have a single build step from your code to a deployable web package, and you can get much closer to the metal (e.g. write your own server) without having to manually manage memory.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

8 comments

dyingkneepad9mo ago

I am.

khedoros19mo ago

Rochus9mo ago

runjake9mo ago

It's worth learning C. I don't think you need to master it to get a lot of value from it. Consider using C on embedded platforms like esp32, if you want a more "simple" introduction.

https://learnxinyminutes.com/c/

codr79mo ago

I am, occasionally, mostly to implement interpreters these days.

But I did spent an awful lot of time in C lately while writing this book:

https://github.com/codr7/hacktical-c

smt889mo ago

You're not looking for C. You want to try Go, Java, C#, or Kotlin.

disattention9mo ago

Please try to be more helpful and less presumptive, especially when someone is asking to learn.

smt889mo ago

They're not trying to explore the "depths of the system". They're tired of the many layers of transformation and build steps in web dev.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse