Thread: Why is C still so popular ?

Hi !!


I have heard this countless times that C is still the fevourite language for serious developers. Sometimes even more than C++ or JAVA. But then if its so why dont I see people using it as much as it is hyped about ? Prior to the dotcom bust, people were talking that JAVA is the best language. Even today I see so many applications written in VC++ and stuff like that. Then why do programmersw still say that C is much better ? Not that i dont know programming at all. I know some C. But still cant understand all this hype about C. So do you think that I should stick to C or change to some better language ? Please help me with this question. Thanks in advance.

Well, after my observations the people have a tendency to fell in love with the first language they have learnt. C has been invented in 1969 sth to code UNIX operating system. Therefore much of the coders have learnt C to accommadate with the new fashion. You may see, if a code is written in C from the scratch and it has been improved for another 10 years in C, then no computer programmer would want to port it to C++, improve it with C++, and therefore would continue with C. However if there is no library behind you, C++ offers a lot of elegant solutions to write code from scrach.

However C++ is ultimate peak of procedural programming with OOP and there are some sacrifieses to improve the speed of the programmming. In system software programs for example you may see a lot of unprocedural approaches (such as global variables, gotos etc) for increasing the performance for the sake of code clarity. This will be unacceptable for OOP community that thinks that code clarity, maintenance have supreme importance. So you may see a lot of system libaries written in C.

However if you ask my opinion, I would say no language is totally supreme over each other. With the Internet age Java may become popular for portability, but try to write a system software with Java and go nuts. Try to write a C or C++ applet and go crazy. Try to write a C++ code with full OOP techiques for a code which can be written in just a page of code.
I think you see the point: There is not only one best language. There are best languages for the thing that you are doing. And that best language will either be C, C++, Java,etc. That is why there are hundreds of languages.

The reason is obvious. However, the problem is that most developers don't know how the compilers, languages, and computers work today, well enough to actually understand the inherent benefits or limitations of each language.

C is far from dead. It is used in virtually all performance code, including games. Microsoft is the biggest pusher of C++, and that's one of the reasons Microsoft products are called "bloatware".

If you want it fast, lean, and mean-- make it C & assembler.
If you want it slow, bulky, buggy-- make it C++.

But don't take my word for it. You need to learn enough about how a compiler, computer, and the language actually works before you can make an informed decision.

Just my humble, _informed_ opinion.