C Alive and Well Thanks to Portable.NET

rhysweatherley writes "So C is dead in a world dominated by bytecode languages, is it? Well, not really. Portable.NET 0.6.4 now has a fairly good C compiler that can compile C to IL bytecode, to run on top of .NET runtimes. We need some assistance from the community to port glibc in the coming months, but it is coming along fast. The real question is this: would you rather program against the pitiful number API's that come with C#, or the huge Free Software diversity that you get with C? The death of C has been greatly exaggerated. It will adapt - it always has."

Communix

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming soon... Communix.org [communix.org]. Put your blood, sweat, and tears into this Unix variant so that it can benefit your fellow comrades. No pay, long hours, and the glory of the state awaits you.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Wow!

[stevens]

All the advanced language features of C with all the speed of an interpreted VM!

Can I get them to compile asm to java bytecode next?

Weren't you guys beaten to it by CNet?

[Ratface]

Sorry - someone had to say it!

Because there was no more room in hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

C lives on; driven by an insatiable unreasoning swarming hunger. Until the day when the seventh seal is broken, the sun dies, and all the languages are at last bound to it's dark will. Then all of man, in the Doom of our time, will writhe in agnoy for a thousand years of darkness until the, strongly typed, Rapture casts the dark empire back into the pits of hell, and scatters the damned to the winds.

Re:Adaption, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when punch cards went obsolete?

No, I'm not a dinosaur.

Huh?

[drgonzo59]

I wonder if Microsoft can then compile the .NET framework into IL and run .NET (on top of .NET)* ?

In the meantime I'll just risk being labeled "old-fashioned" and compile C straight to binary

Re:Adaption, but..

[jayjaylee]

Remember when punch cards went obsolete?

Yes. :'(

I'm old enough where my toddler drinks Pediasure, my wife drinks Boost (to give her nutrients during her pregnancy), and I'm on Slimfast.

I'll cry myself to sleep tonight ...

Broader Perspective

[VoidEngineer]

Summary of argument to date (translated from geek-speak):

> Queens English is so dead.
> Yo, it's all about Ebonics.
> Dude, Southern Drawl is *soo* slow... Surfer speak is a way better language.
> Like, Valley Speak is, like, the best networking dialect to know!
> Well, if you want a job with a blue-chip company, go with Chicago Twang.
> I hear that they're porting the Queens English libraries to Chicago English, btw.
> See? Queens English is not dead...

Dialects, people... just dialects. Try to see things in the broader scheme of things. (punny, eh?).

Re:FOR THE LAST TIME...

[MukiMuki]

Isn't this the part where a troll brings in the "NetBSD is dying article" with C as the replacement modifier value? C'mon, they HAVE to have an atomatic generator by NOW.

It's not dead.

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

It's just pining for the fjords.

Well....

[Anonymous Coward]

if we could only get a compiler that does what I think I'm doing instead of what I actually told it to do....then we'd have something

To be sure, check Google News.

[Futurepower(R)]

However, you should check News.Google.com [google.com] frequently in case the world ended and no one told you.

Re: C? Dead?

[Black Parrot]

> As a Christian, I won't write anything in C (obviously) [...] and do you think that these systems are going to be ported to Java or BASH?

As a Christian, you should clearly support J4V4 in all things.

C is Dead

[WankersRevenge]

I know. I killed him. I ran him down in my PHP-mobile while drag racing with those Ruby punks on their friggin crotch rockets. At least C++ had the sense to step out of the way. I guess they were arguing about how their half-witted brother C# knocked up his half witted twin sister, Java, and produced some hideous premature birth thingy who they called Mono. I would have turned around and hit C++ had I not blown a module and had to stop. Those Ruby punks gave me the bird, but you wait and see. I got this new Zend nitrus which knock the socks of those badboys but I don't know how plug it in. Anyone got the number of a good mechanic?

Re:Keep it real...

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is this: would you rather program against the pitiful number of security holes that come with C#, or the huge Security Hole diversity that you get with C?

Re:Does it work with MONO?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should work ... but MONO thinks "C is dead" .. so might run into dead code elimination of the JIT.. ;-)

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

C is a gift from the Gods.
C++ is a gift from the Devil.

Re:Not that simple

[Tumbleweed]

Hey, that might just speed up MS Word enough to be usable! :)

(it's a _joke_, laugh!)

Re:FOR THE LAST TIME...

[Anonymous Coward]

...OR wait until Netcraft confirms it.

Re:FOR THE LAST TIME...

[Grizzlysmit]

...stop telling me things are DYING, maybe let me know when they're DEAD.

Maybe we could have special section on the main page, sort of like a bullet list, only instead of bullets we have either red (dying) or green (getting better/alive again) graphic's, then we could watch them blinking away as various things die and undie :-D

Thank God!

[jasonditz]

I was just wondering [gnu.org] where I could get a C compiler.

C is good but...

[polemistes]

I used to love C, but then I found something much better: Assembly language; pure and clean machine code. It has lots of advantages:

• You get full control. Turn off this multi tasking nonsense. Search into the depths of power you never knew existed in your box.
• Unending possibilities for optimalization of your code. You could use a whole lifetime to figure out the quickest way of calculating the distance the Earth travels during the time you are coding the routine.
• You can make code that works on your own machine, and no one else's. So if someone likes your program, they have to pay you to create a new one for their machine as well.
• Nobody but you will understand the code you're making. So you can release your program as Free Open Source, and people still have to pay you to make changes and updates.

Re:What about C++?

[Viol8]

Yes , that optimised x86 assembler will come in *real* useful on a Sparc, PA_RISC, 68000, Power-PC etc etc architecture won't it when you need
to drop an equation solver into your OO program.

Re:FOR THE LAST TIME...

[gauchopuro]

It is at best stupid to talk about how 'C is dying' anyway, seeing as it is still the most popular language in many areas, as well as the single biggest inspirator for 'new' languages.

I agree 100% that C is the biggest inspirator for new languages. One can only take being burned by C's shortcomings so much before deciding that there has to be a better way.

Re:FOR THE LAST TIME...

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct term for C# and .Net is 'stillborn'.

Re:Please stop C++ calling portable

[ALLXSTHINGS]

Silly, your program will never call portable() unless you tell it to.

Re:What about C++?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Obj-C on the other hand looks like the designers thought to hell with C , we'll design our own new-look language and shoehorn it kicking and screaming into C.

After meeting the designer, I'm inclined to agree.

Re:Insightful

[deadlinegrunt]

How can C be dead regardless?
I thought C can't die, it just gets cast to void.

couldn't resist

[stephenisu]

It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: C is dying Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered C community when recently IDC confirmed that C accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all languages. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that C has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. C is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict C's future. The hand writing is on the wall: C faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for C because C is dying. Things are looking very bad for C. As many of us are already aware, C continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeC is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenC leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenC. How many users of NetC are there? Let's see. The number of OpenC versus NetC posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetC users. C/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetC posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of C/OS. A recent article put FreeC at about 80 percent of the C market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeC users. This is consistent with the number of FreeC Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeC went out of business and was taken over by CI who sell another troubled OS. Now CI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that C has steadily declined in market share. C is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If C is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. C continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, C is dead.

Fact: C is dead

Ya don't say?

[Anonymous Coward]

For 87 cents a day, you can buy a poor /.er a dictionary

How much does it cost to make him use it?