XPost: alt.folklore.computers, alt.unix.geeks
From: robin_listas@es.invalid
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 wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2026-01-06, Carlos E.R. 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🇪🇺;
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