Do you C?

[Anna Jayne Metcalfe]

Not anymore, unless there's a very good reason. I just find it far too limiting. :doh:

Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"

[peterchen]

I *cough* know someone who does.

Burning Chrome ^ | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist

[Noam Sigal]

Yes! For embedded micro-controllers, communication and HW-related SW. We also program C++ (.Net, Borland), Java, C#. Our system and code are quite complex, involving several embedded platforms, PDA, several PC clients and servers, GUI, control, RT... you name it. Where we require portability, performance, and EASY MAINTENANCE - C is the #1 choice.

noams66

[Lost User]

C will never die, greatest things needs to be done in C. A real programmer writes C and assembler I am not very good with assembler so i am not a real programmer ;) For business, maybe C is not the better option, but for innovation, robotic, AI you need to have C on your mind, or every step of your personal robot will consume 200W of electricity and take 2 minutes to complete ;P C is better to export to another language that C++ :) lange Lebensdauer zu C!

Saludos!! ____Juan

[Mirds]

Of course I do. Work with really critical systems, such as avionics, does not allow you to use object oriented programming. So C and ADA are a must.

[Paul Sanders the other one]

Having been a die-hard C programmer for many years, but now something of a convert, I can say that I would miss virtual functions (especially destructors) and inheritance. I know you can *do* it in C (more or less) but it's a pain. I use templates rarely, but occasionally they are a lifesaver (no more 50 line, impossible to debug #define's), and being able to declare local variables anywhere in the body of a function certainly makes my code that bit tidier. What I like about C++ is that if you use it wisely, it is as efficient as C. What I dislike about C++ is that it can be virtually impossible to follow, and be very inefficient, if abused. I could live without the STL personally, except for map which I use a lot for 'associative arrays' (read 'access by key'). Hell, anyone can code a linked list :) My favourite toy is a templated 'smart pointer' that deletes itself when it goes out of scope. Makes life a lot simpler and avoids a lot of bugs.

Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk

[Paul Sanders the other one]

> Work with really critical systems, such as avionics, does not allow you to use object oriented programming. So C and ADA are a must. Why on earth not?

Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk

[Machaira]

For general application development there's no reason to use C (or C++). Long live C#!

[Paul Sanders the other one]

I kind of agree with that, apart from the system requirements of the .Net framework - c# is a mich nicer language.

Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk

[Mirds]

There is a norm called DO 178-B that says so. OOP is not safe enough to work unless you be extremely cautious about it, and very extremely cautious. So to prevent errors and, therefore, fatal accidents, OOP is forbidden to this date. A new review of the norm, the DO 178-C, is said to permit OOP under extreme controlled conditions. So, when you need to prove that your SW is bug-free, you just avoid at all costs to use OOP. Besides not using OOP, it is becoming more and more recommended the use of formal methods to help the proof of bug-free SW.

[CPallini]

Yes, of course. :)

If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler. -- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong. -- Iain Clarke
[My articles]

[tom1443]

I don't see C and Assembly being replaced in the embedded world too soon. Nobody I work with likes the idea. We tried C++ here, built a few overpriced and unmaintainable products and dropped it. And if I recall the most recent survey in Embedded Systems correctly, C++ adoption is on the decline in other places that do embedded work too. The C++ that we still do is for tools we develop and cutomer products that run on PCs like print clients.

[tom1443]

Alot of it has to do with that fact that dynamic memory allocation is dangerous in an embedded system. When you can't grab a new chunk of memory you can't just pop up a window, tell the user and let the program exit. If that happens in a critical system spacecraft will crash, missles hit friendly targets, or trains run through control signals. In critical systems, static memory allocation is preferred.

[Paul Sanders the other one]

Yes, I can see the sense of that, although I would have thought that embedded systems built on modern hardware (and I know that not all are) would have ample memory. Seems to me actually that there's an argument here for a language like C# (or Java), with garbage collection and no 'free' function, as the chances of a potentially fatal memory leak are reduced. Hard to provide realtime guarantees with such a language though since GC can happen any old time.

Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk

[RTS WORK]

Did a code review of some Open Source command line encryption algorithm written in C. Ended up re-building it to make sure the binary = source. Been like 20 years but it's all good.

[JudyL_MD]

But of course since among other things, I work on drivers Judy

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss. Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love" by Robert A. Heinlein

[_dunk_]

tom1443 wrote:

We tried C++ here, built a few overpriced and unmaintainable products and dropped it.

To successfully switch from C to C++, you absolutely must understand and properly use OOP. At least for the core infrastructure at a minimum. Otherwise you end up with overpriced and unmaintable products as you get all the problems that come with structured design AND OO design if you do not. Don't blame the language for lack of skill on the developers part. There is absolutely no reason that C++ can't be successfully used in an embedded system short of having a lack of development tools for the particular embedded environment. There are just some extra details that an embedded developer needs to be concerned about (in particular memory management). C++ has been used on many embedded systems requiring the 5 9's availability level. With that said, there are some applications that are just more suited to structured development where C programming has a role, like drivers and algorithms.

[CDMTJX]

Stuff here at work in in a variety of languages, including C. I prefer objects; C++, C#, or Java. char* string handling is possible, but painful!

[etkid84]

propaganda from the Java and C# peeps who were too stupid to understand pointers. :cool:

David

[Mirds]

Besides that, doing "Modified Condition/Decision Coverage(MC/DC)" is already a pain in the ass with structured programming, imagine doing it in OOP. Stack overflow is also hard to guarantee in OOP.

Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft) wrote:

Yes, I can see the sense of that, although I would have thought that embedded systems built on modern hardware (and I know that not all are) would have ample memory. Seems to me actually that there's an argument here for a language like C# (or Java), with garbage collection and no 'free' function, as the chances of a potentially fatal memory leak are reduced. Hard to provide realtime guarantees with such a language though since GC can happen any old time. Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk