ESR on post-C landscape

[codephantom]

On Tuesday, 14 November 2017 at 16:38:58 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grostad 
wrote:
> It [C]is flawed... ESR got that right, not sure how anyone can 
> disagree.

Well I 'can' disagree ;-)

Is a scalpel flawed because someone tried to use it to screw in a 
screw?

Languages are just part of an evolutionary chain.

No part of the chain should be considered flawed - unless it was 
actually flawed - in that it didn't meet the demands of the 
environment in which it was initially conceived. In that 
circumstance, it must be considered flawed, and evolutionary 
forces will quickly take care of that.

But a programming language is not flawed, simply because people 
use it an environment where it was not designed to operate.

If I take the average joe blow out of his comfy house, and put 
him in the middle of raging battle field, is Joe Blow flawed, 
because he quickly got shot down? What's flawed there, is the 
decision to take Joe Blow and put him in the battlefield.

Corporate needs/strategy, skews ones view of the larger 
environment, and infects language design. I think it's infected 
Go, from the get Go. I am glad D is not being designed by a 
corporate, otherwise D would be something very different, and far 
less interesting.

The idea that C is flawed, also skews ones view of the larger 
environment, and so it too infects language design. This is where 
Eric got it wrong, in my opinion. He's looking for the language 
that can best fix the flaws of C.

In fact C has barely had to evolve (which is not a sign of 
something that is flawed), because it works just fine, in 
enviroments for which it was designed to work in. And those 
enviroments still exist today. They will still exist 
tomorrow..and the next day...and the next..and...

So language designers..please stop the senseless bashing of C.

Why does anyone need array index validation anyway? I don't get 
it. If you're indexing incorrectly into an array..you're a fool.

btw. The conditions under which C evolved, are well documented 
here. It's a facinating read.

https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.pdf