On 01/07/07, Gerhard Fiedler <lists@connectionbrazil.com> wrote:
> wouter van ooijen wrote:
>
> >> I think Peter's point is that if you use a compiler in such an
> >> environment, you better make sure that what you need is explicitly
> >> specified as reentrant.
> >
> > That is essentially a strawman argument: bad implementations exist (or
> > could exist), so the language feature is bad.
>
> I don't think it's necessarily a strawman argument. It's difficult to get
> anything guaranteed by any software vendors these days; most things are
> specified as "it's working unless it doesn't" :)  The more complex a
> language is, the more difficult is it to make sure for yourself, and the
> more complex it may be to find out when something doesn't work as specified
> (which actually happens occasionally :).
>
> IMO this is one of the reasons why C has been around for so long in the
> area of small embedded systems: it's a workable compromise. (Which is not
> to say that other such compromises, and better ones for many situations,
> exist.)

The sole reason why C is abundant in embedded systems programming is
because C was abundant in embedded systems programming. Did you ever
try to convince somebody to NOT do the tread path and to try something
new? You should try - it gives you a whole new perspective on why
Windows is used everywhere, why people keep using C for embedded
systems and why people keep driving SUV's. The main answer is the
Prisoners Dilemma, which (in short) says that you have to do
everything that you could do to gain an advantage, and if you do
something different you most likely have a disadvantage.

People use C because they have code in C, people don't switch to
Pascal because of their C code base. The only difference would be in
startups - and notably startups have a high failure rate that isn't
related to the language. Which leads to statistics showing that using
C gives your project a low chance of failure (in a noncausal relation)
causing all managers to flock to C. Again.

As I've been sure of for 20 years (and given my age, that's an awful
long time for me) people use what's known to work and if you're the
one that produces what's known to work you only have to make your
application sufficient. If people accept 10 crashes per day - so be
it. The entire concept of brands and product lines never appealed to
me but unfortunately I appear to be a strong minority in that. I'm for
change if I see the results being better than before, even if I'm not
sure that the results will be better.

Apologies for the rant.

Regards,
Peter
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