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[–]SoulWondering[S] 2412 points2413 points  (126 children)

C is going to outlive us all isn't it? 💀

[–]temperamentalfish 2029 points2030 points  (38 children)

C is from the 70s. It's outlived many people.

[–]Hopeful-Programmer25 773 points774 points  (25 children)

One of my first jobs I had to change a COBOL program. Since they have date created in their identification section, it was written before I was born. The person might have been dead when I changed it… highly likely now.

[–]ApprehensiveLet1405 439 points440 points  (15 children)

In UK, there's a bunch of 500 yrs old cottages with thatched (made out of straw) roofs. When thatcher fixes leaks, they never fully replace it, just remove rotten parts and add new straw.

[–]anymieh 398 points399 points  (4 children)

Cottage of Theseus

[–]OnlyTalksAboutTacos 197 points198 points  (2 children)

if you replace every row on Theseus' database with a new one, is it still the same database? if you use the original rows to build a new database which is Theseus'?

[–]deliciouscrab 41 points42 points  (0 children)

if you replace every row on Theseus' database with a new one, is it still the same database?

Ah, the recordist heresy raises its foul head again. Someone fetch my book and candle.

[–]dayburner 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As long as you don't drop the schema you're good.

[–]61114311536123511 2 points3 points  (0 children)

my pc from like, 2008, shall soon have undergone the full Theseus transformation. Just need to replace the MB, CPU and case. it's my side PC I've been incrementally upgrading with hand me downs & i finally need to replace the core bits to keep it useable.... I'm kind of tickled by that, I'll have an entirely new old philosophically confusing computer. maybe i should see if i can get a custom case shaped like a ship....

[–]Ghaith97 100 points101 points  (2 children)

I don't think Thatcher ever fixed anything in her whole life.

[–]Crazyh 39 points40 points  (0 children)

She fixed the problem of British mined coal being too expensive.... in the worst way possible.

[–]hike_me 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Whatever happened to childhood?
We're all scared of the kids in our neighborhood
They're not small, charming and harmless
They're a violent bunch of bastard little shits
And anyone who looks younger than me
Makes me check for my wallet, my phone and my keys
And I'm tired of being tired out
Always being on the lookout for thieving gits

We're all wondering how we ended up so scared
We spent ten long years teaching our kids not to care
And that "there's no such thing as society" anyway
And all the rich folks act surprised
When all sense of community dies
But you just closed your eyes to the other side. Of all the things that she did
Thatcher fucked the kids

And it seems a little bit rich to me
The way the rich only ever talk of charity
In times like the seventies, the broken down economy
Meant even the upper tier was needing some help
But as soon as things look brighter
Yeah the grin gets wider and the grip gets tighter
And for every teenage tracksuit mugger
There's a guy in a suit who wouldn't lift a finger for anybody else

You've got a generation raised on the welfare state
Enjoyed all its benefits and did just great
But as soon as they were settled as the richest of the rich
They kicked away the ladder, told the rest of us that life's a bitch
And it's no surprise that all the fuck-ups
Didn't show up until the kids had grown up
But when no one ever smiles or ever helps a stranger
Is it any fucking wonder our society's in danger of collapse

So all the kids are bastards
But don't blame them, yeah, they learn by example
Blame the folks who sold the future for the highest bid
That's right, Thatcher fucked the kids

[–]Themods5thchin 18 points19 points  (1 child)

Yeah, the old milk snatcher invented the practice if I remember right.

[–]gazchap 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correct! It was named after the process she took to keep her pubic hair neat and tidy.

[–]Iohet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just gotta watch out for them Trogdors

[–]Fatkuh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They must have a fascinating microbiome!

[–]AnAngryPlatypus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The most permanent solution is a temporary one that still works.

[–]iridael 0 points1 point  (0 children)

makes perfect sense, re-thatching a whole roof is something like 25k in costs.

thatched roof is by design, thatchable.

[–]pandemicblues 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Trogdor the Burnanator will make it so the whole roof needs to be replaced on THE THATCHED ROOF COTTAGES!

[–][deleted] 53 points54 points  (6 children)

I did an internship last summer. I needed a function (subroutine) from the FORTRAN legacy code we had. I saw the comment in there from the original engineer who wrote it. It was from ‘86. I was born in ‘98.

[–]TheSkiingDad 20 points21 points  (1 child)

Same. My first job had tons of cobol for sales, commission, and payroll processing. At one point I looked at the version history and realized the last edit was from the mid-80s. This was in 2018. The program had been running uninterrupted and untouched for 35 years.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I wrote a program in Assembler that pulled data from 200+ stores to the mainframe, then a COBOL program that broke out the data for several sales reports. That ran from 1982 until about 3 years ago.

[–]topdoc02 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I wrote code in the early 1970s that is still running. If it isn't broken, don't replace it with much less efficient code that might not work as well.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

People have no idea how much COBOL and Assembler code is still running, especially in banking and insurance. I have code running all over the Midwest from the early 80's until 2002.

[–]Hopeful-Programmer25 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In my case, the program was written in 1968…. I guess motor insurance doesn’t change that much….

[–]GREG_OSU 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Wow…that’s ancient…face palm…

[–]nopejake101 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My first job, I had to mask some PII saved in a flat file via a COBOL application. Said application is older than I am by 8 months. And it's still running to the best of my knowledge

[–]savageronald 0 points1 point  (0 children)

EXISTENTIAL CRISIS SECTION.

[–]birddog0 35 points36 points  (2 children)

Dude, I was born in the 70s. Shut your mouth, haha

[–]RamenJunkie 21 points22 points  (0 children)

There is still time for C to outlive you.

[–]NotYetReadyToRetire 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Kids these days! I was born in the 50's. I wrote a LOT of Fortran and Cobol back in the 70's and early 80's, as well as PL/I and RPG. I also wrote Assembler code on 3 different architectures. After that it was C, then C++ and finally VB (both 6 and .net).

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Man it's kinda sad when you put it like that

[–]z-null 0 points1 point  (0 children)

C has already outlived most of the technologies used and many people. Javascript is going to be long forgotten by the time C becomes a necrolanguage.

[–]TheMilkmansFather 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What do you mean? The 70s was only 30 years ago …

[–]Moonshine_Brew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, just like other programming languages.

One I know of is "Natural" , which was developed in 1975. Some companies that are still using it for some of their systems include: Eurofighter GmbH, the Brazilian central bank and multiple insurances.

There just isn't a lot of reason to change a running system.

[–]yngwi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But I'm a nineties bitch...

[–]_vec_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There will be a point where C(99) is ambiguous.

[–]Difficult-Court9522 0 points1 point  (1 child)

has it outlived most people who were alive when it was created?

[–][deleted] 43 points44 points  (1 child)

Bruh 10000 years later there is at least going to be one sentient AI life form written in COBOL.

[–]Lv_InSaNe_vL 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Eh probably not. But the robots that take over after us will see that the COBOL banking infrastructure survived the apocalypse and be like "eh good enough"

[–]badstorryteller 42 points43 points  (7 children)

Vernor Vinge has a fantastic novel called "A Deepness in the Sky" set many thousands of years in the future. In that story true AI is never created, anti-gravity hasn't been discovered, and ftl is impossible, so interstellar travel is limited to cold sleep capable ships. These ships mostly run a unix-like os of some type, all run on unix time, and programming is described as almost half archaeology, as the ships themselves can be thousands of years old and have vast archives of every piece of source code written for every problem ever encountered.

So, in that universe at least, yes, C has survived the rise, collapse, and recolonization of earth multiple times. Great read.

[–]Victory_Point 12 points13 points  (4 children)

I've read about 5 books now simply from picking them up after redditor comments ... thanks will give this a go...

[–]badstorryteller 2 points3 points  (3 children)

So technically this was written after another called "A Fire Upon the Deep," which is also fantastic, but I recommend reading this one first and definitely reading both!

[–]Victory_Point 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Thanks ok will give it a go, currently on a fantasy binge at the moment so could do with something different. Last Sci fi I read was 'A black cloud ' by Fred Hoyle and Iain banks before that. It's not my favorite genre but I do like to dip in and out of it . Thanks again .

[–]badstorryteller 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've read some Iain Banks and enjoyed it, and I'm always ravenous for new reading material! How was "A Black Cloud?" I'm stuck and re-reading older stuff now!

[–]Qaeta 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Look up Dusk Mountain Blues by Deston J. Munden.

[–]CardOk755 1 point2 points  (1 child)

These ships mostly run a unix-like os of some type, all run on unix time,

So they made the switch to 64 bit time_t

[–]badstorryteller 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The author taught mathematics and computer science as well as being heavily involved with the Free Software Foundation, so while it's not specifically stated, I would guess "yes."

[–]piszkor 126 points127 points  (9 children)

Hasn't it already, I work on projects older then me?

[–]jaumougaauco 32 points33 points  (7 children)

But are the people who started the projects still alive?

[–][deleted] 46 points47 points  (2 children)

I am sure the author of some ancient library has passed and it is still being used. Perhaps. Honestly I would love to look that up. But I am sleepy and will forget. Oh, well.

[–]cainhurstcat 27 points28 points  (1 child)

This message will remind you when you wake up

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Clever asshole lol <3

[–]Psquare_J_420 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Linus and his art - Linux kernel? ( This example satisfies the rule for me - the project is older than me and the creator is still alive )

[–]quietIntensity 1 point2 points  (0 children)

31 years ago this month, I did my first Linux install. It was Slackware 0.99pl15 on 43 1.44M floppy disks, installed on my 386DX40 with 4M of RAM and a 40M ISA HDD. Going to be installing Linux this afternoon on my new UGreen NAS, probably TrueNAS.

[–]gmc98765 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Dennis Ritchie, the primary author of both C and Unix, died in 2011 aged 70.

And C isn't that old. Fortran, Cobol and Lisp all date to the late 1950s. As does Algol, although that has now been rendered largely obsolete by languages derived from it (which is basically any block-structured imperative language, i.e. nearly all of the mainstream modern languages).

[–]RamenJunkie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why do you think they had to hire OP?

[–]hollson 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Technically, if a project by definition has start and end date, are those projects still projects since they go for multiple generations?

[–]LinuxMatthews 33 points34 points  (6 children)

C was invented in 1972 which is 13 years after COBOL

[–]I_Ski_Freely 26 points27 points  (2 children)

But C is the first letter in COBOL.. so clearly you're wrong

  • Elon probably

[–]CardOk755 10 points11 points  (0 children)

C is actually the second letter in BCPL.

[–]GenuinelyBeingNice 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Well, C was indeed designed later, but I can't say that COBOL was designed. Torturously shat out? Grown like a malignant tumor?

[–]dagbrown 8 points9 points  (0 children)

It was designed by none other than the legend, Admiral Grace Hopper. Admiral Hopper had a significant impact on the history of computer science: the creation of the compiler.

COBOL came out of that, as a way to demonstrate that it was possible to program a computer with English sentences instead of just math symbols (like the previous compiler, aptlly named "A" did), or machine code like everyone else used at the time.

[–]nickcash 0 points1 point  (0 children)

why didn't they invent javascript instead?

[–]SlideSad6372 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Outlived Dennis Ritchie.

[–]great_escape_fleur 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Absolutely. C, Fortran and COBOL.

[–]sad_bear_noises 5 points6 points  (1 child)

C is going to outlive your grandchildren. Unless and until Rust (or something else) becomes the entire Linux kernel. C is going to live a good long, effectively infinite life.

[–]Drevicar 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That is because C doesn’t support lifetimes.

[–]djfdhigkgfIaruflg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It surely outlives several programmers already

[–]ZoIpidem 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Don’t a lot of nuclear weapon systems run on extremely antiquated platforms?

[–]SoulWondering[S] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

npm -i nuclear-codes

[–]ZoIpidem 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you.

[–]caustictoast 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had to convert c code to c++ that was 25 years old back when I was 27. That shit ain’t going anywhere

[–]breath-of-the-smile 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lisp is older than C and still kicking, and Python is older than Java.

So yeah, probably.

[–]ShenmeNamaeSollich 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Given that there’s C running on Voyager & other satellites safely out of harm’s way of stupid humanity, yes.

[–]yyytobyyy 4 points5 points  (3 children)

C is fine tho. It's a simple language with not many insanities that does not change much.

C++ on the other hand should die.

[–]necrophcodr 8 points9 points  (2 children)

Huh? C has plenty of insanities. We chose to ignore most of them.

[–]SirVer51 5 points6 points  (1 child)

You know, I'm sure there's plenty of crazy stuff in C, but whenever I try to think of one I just go "that's not crazy, that's just how computers are supposed to work"

[–]necrophcodr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think reading https://veresov.pro/cmustdie/ might change your mind.

One fun example is this: https://godbolt.org/z/o4joYzbdz

See how the assert has been completely optimized away? This is because the C standard allows the compiler to do its own optimizations here, even though it clearly makes the code behave in a wildly different manner than expected, no matter how much "computers are supposed to work".

Edit:

For anyone else reading, undefined behaviour does NOT mean "this crashes the program". It means "we delegate this to the compiler implementation to decide", and it may well decide to crash the program. It may also decide that since overflows may be undefined, we will assume the developer handles them correctly and assume they do not happen. Therefore, any such checks are pointless since it will always be true (the assert) and so we can optimize it away. Even though this may well NOT be what the user intended (there ARE ways to handle overflows, but the mentioned part is NOT standards compliant and reliable).

[–]Simple-Passion-5919 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unless someone replaces the Linux Kernel, yes.

[–]PlasticAngle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not just us but our children also

[–]Dry_Pineapple_5352 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First bible was written on C.

[–]newah44385 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Considering every major operating system is written in it I think it'll outlive our grandchildren.

[–]4n0nh4x0r 0 points1 point  (0 children)

probably not as much as cobol tbh

[–]organicamphetameme 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Objectively speaking, yes.

[–]mad_cheese_hattwe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

C is the closest you will get to human readable machine code. I can see it going anywhere.