> Now C isn’t just a programming language, it’s a protocol.
But the image above that is calling conventions for functions on a particular processor. What does that have to do with C?
> So actually semantically parsing a C header is a horrible nightmare
I'm confused. It seems to me the right way to go would be to improve C such that it's more precisely specified, easier to parse, etc. Genuine question: why is that so hard? (I suspect the reasons are more institutional than technical.)
Variable declarations are syntactically weird in C, for example. And newer languages seem to have better ways (that are actually context-free). So why couldn't C be evolved toward that?
> int foo(int x, int y)
becomes
> foo(x: i32, y: i32) -> i32
and so on.
> You don’t see England trying to improve itself, do you?
I guess that's a saying I'm not familiar with. Seems to me England has improved a lot over the years.
Go easy on me, geniuses.
But the image above that is calling conventions for functions on a particular processor. What does that have to do with C?
> So actually semantically parsing a C header is a horrible nightmare
I'm confused. It seems to me the right way to go would be to improve C such that it's more precisely specified, easier to parse, etc. Genuine question: why is that so hard? (I suspect the reasons are more institutional than technical.)
Variable declarations are syntactically weird in C, for example. And newer languages seem to have better ways (that are actually context-free). So why couldn't C be evolved toward that?
> int foo(int x, int y)
becomes
> foo(x: i32, y: i32) -> i32
and so on.
> You don’t see England trying to improve itself, do you?
I guess that's a saying I'm not familiar with. Seems to me England has improved a lot over the years.
Go easy on me, geniuses.