2016-01-31 - C

The C programming language is really enjoyable to work with. It’s a nice simple language that does very little to get in your way but that also makes it a very error-prone language.

In C there’s a limited number of types and ways of interacting with those types. It is possible to define structs which wrap multiple bits of information and functions which wrap a series of operations but this is very limited compared to the object-oriented aspects of other languages. That being said it is possible to build these more complex systems out of what is provided. This is one of C greatest strengths. It provides a small easy to learn base that is powerful enough to support large complex systems being built on top of it.

This does have some potential for issues though. Because the complex systems have to be built from scratch there’s a large chance that mistakes can be made if the people building the complex system are not very careful. C is also not the kind of language that will catch these mistakes for you. Thus as you build the complex systems you also need to design things to catch and prevent mistakes.

This simplicity and lack of validation comes from C’s heritage as a language for making operating systems. If you are building the base system for controlling the computer it’s hard to rely on the things that those systems usually provide. C is basically just an abstraction of assembly and as suck It provides the same freedom to have the computer do whatever you want it to do. It was meant to make writing these low-level systems easier without limiting the programmers options.

I would describe C as a good experimental language. It’s very easy to quickly make a program that does something and in doing so gain a better understanding of how the computer works. It’s not something you really want to be building really complicated programs out of unless you really know what you are doing and need the freedom it provides.