> the general trend of nudging, cajoling more and more coders into using managed, very high level, safe languages and runtimes
This is a good thing: these languages and runtimes are indeed much safer, and also much more productive than C. You can even still get the same amount of low-level control with Rust.
> in general discouraging peeking under the hood, at the hardware level, as something raw, wild or unsafe.
C is unsafe though. Decades of experience writing software has shown us that even expert C programmers write memory bugs with regularity.
> Yes you can still do it on a RPi
Or any other PC really.
> but perhaps in another decade or so, you might not be allowed to program in 'unsafe' languages on all other mainstream platforms, unless you register for a driver/system developer license or something, or not even that.
Lunacy. What is the evidence for this?
> The tinkerer/hacker ethos is disappearing slowly from PCs.
It was only ever there in the first place with a tiny minority of users, and that minority seems as committed to their craft as they've ever been.
This is a good thing: these languages and runtimes are indeed much safer, and also much more productive than C. You can even still get the same amount of low-level control with Rust.
> in general discouraging peeking under the hood, at the hardware level, as something raw, wild or unsafe.
C is unsafe though. Decades of experience writing software has shown us that even expert C programmers write memory bugs with regularity.
> Yes you can still do it on a RPi
Or any other PC really.
> but perhaps in another decade or so, you might not be allowed to program in 'unsafe' languages on all other mainstream platforms, unless you register for a driver/system developer license or something, or not even that.
Lunacy. What is the evidence for this?
> The tinkerer/hacker ethos is disappearing slowly from PCs.
It was only ever there in the first place with a tiny minority of users, and that minority seems as committed to their craft as they've ever been.