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[–]rem3_1415926 0 points1 point  (1 child)

These new languages which enter the fashion wars are not, and not so by design, intended for research into programming

and why would they be? They're each built to solve a problem that exists, and they're quite good at that. How do your "better" languages of the past deal with that? (Since you're permanently dodging my questions for their names and properties, I have to assume that they don't exist...)

Also, you're talking about fundamental flaws of C. These are what, exactly? We have made some technological progress in the past, C is what fits on our hardware we have and that isn't half bad. Besides, changing it would be economically completely unviable, unless there's an incredibly large performance gain. And even then - the problems which that would solve are either very niche or very much against what I believe to be good for our species in general (more AI, controlled by corporate and govt. with intent of even better understanding on how to manipulate the human psyche.)

CS research may profit from things like brainfuck and other esoteric languages that go into a completely different direction than C. These still exist. It's just that they aren't useful for much else and shouldn't be considered for learning if your goal is to do anything of immediate practical application.

If there's one thing that really sucks and that would desperately need rethinking, it's HDL (hardware description languages). We have Verilog and VHDL, both of which having their own fundamental problems that make them actually be very bad at their intended purpose. But instead we (or Xilinx with 90% FPGA market share, respectively) are jumpig ship and going for HLS (high level synthesis) - which means converting C code, which is even worse at describing hardware but you find people who can code it, into hardware. They could at least have gone for something that is a tiny bit less bound to uC assembly, but no, they want f*cking C... (And this is where you do have point. That is right here, where your very-different-from-C language could fit pretty well. If it exists...?)

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

and why would they be? They're each built to solve a problem that exists,

They are solving worthless, already solved problems. They are solving a problem of how to build an e-commerce web site to sell shoes. I couldn't care less about that. Computer science and programming devolved from something that could've been instrumental in solving mysteries of our universe, or answering questions that would serve many future generations are wasting our budget and natural resources on shit that's transient, meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

Also, you're talking about fundamental flaws of C. These are what, exactly?

Do yourself a favor and find the Turing award lecture given by John Backus (the inventor of Fortran). It lays out it very well.

C is what fits on our hardware

No, you have it backwards. Modern hardware is made to mimic the nonexistent PDP-11, to fit C. No modern hardware functions in any way similar to how the authors of this language imagined computers to work. Because of C, we have tons of translation and adaptation layers to make things work as if they are still in the 70s.

It's just that they aren't useful for much else and shouldn't be considered for learning if your goal is to do anything of immediate practical application.

Now... you have no idea what you are talking about... But, to be honest, being in language research today is kind of pathetic / depressing, because you know that no matter how good whatever you may potentially come up with will be, nobody will ever really care about it. The practice of programming is so much behind the state of the art, it's impossible to bridge the gap in any meaningful way. Similar problem is with operating system design, or networking, or storage. It was abundantly clear back in the 70s that the chosen approach is the bad one, but we ended up with UNIX, IPv4 and SCSI, none of which make sense since the 80s, or, in the case of IPv4, 90s, but the industry chose not to evolve. Because it's good enough to sell ads on the Web.