[OT] C vs C++

[Atila Neves]

On Thursday, 1 September 2022 at 09:38:48 UTC, Dukc wrote:
> On Tuesday, 30 August 2022 at 11:53:40 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:
>> On Friday, 26 August 2022 at 21:16:20 UTC, Dukc wrote:
>>
>> I'd much rather use C++ over C. As to why C programmers don't 
>> migrate, well:
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Sd8A6_fYU
>
> Good video, thanks. So, you think it's all psychology?

Yes, because it definitely has nothing to do with tech.

> Considering we have popular political movements that can't IMO 
> be explained rationally (won't say which movements I'm thinking 
> here), potentially so. If we can be emotions-before-reason 
> about politics, it only makes sense we can be 
> emotions-before-reason about our tools.

It's the same thing, it's politics all the way down.

> Still, I hope there are more charitable reasons.

Sadly, probably not.

> We wouldn't want to declare C choosers to be fools after all.

There are reasons to choose C. Some of them will be used by 
people post-hoc explaining their choice even if it had nothing to 
do with it. The decision isn't rational, the explanation 
afterwards is the brain trying to make sense of the original 
decision. See: "I can't use a GC language because..."

> One could be what the top comment on that video says: "It 
> wasn't the language itself, it was the people, and how they 
> chose to use the language, and how they chose to show everyone 
> how smart they were by using every possible feature of the 
> language to its largest extent possible".

That same person claims that "but the worst ANSI C I have 
encountered was easier to fix than the worst C++ I have 
encountered". Not in my experience. And that's part of the 
problem: we're all shaped by our own past experiences, and that's 
easy to see when looking at what different programmers 
prioritise. I think it's all a reaction to being burned before 
and avoiding *that*, but we've all been burned in very, very 
different ways.