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Poll: Have you used C/C++?

November 10, 2011, 8:15 AM PST

Takeaway: Developer Justin James has never used C in his professional work and is curious to know if other developers use it in their careers.

When I entered this business, languages like Perl and VB were just coming to prominence and giving developers a chance to develop applications in languages other than COBOL, C/C++, FORTRAN, and Pascal. Those languages had really dominated application development for at least a decade, and even longer when you consider the history of COBOL and FORTRAN. By the time I graduated college, many schools had switched from teaching C or C++ to Java, and now it is not uncommon to find CS graduates who have never touched either language.

I used C in college briefly, but I’ve never had to use it professionally. Have you used C/C++ in your career?

Have you used C/C++?

J.Ja

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About Justin James

Justin James is the Lead Architect for Conigent.

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2 Votes

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Contributr

"the way the industry is going"

Sterling "chip" Camden 12th Nov 2011

... ten years ago. That's the trouble with teaching supposedly marketable skills instead of theory: the schools can't keep up. But if they taught Lisp and all the theory behind it, they'd produce people who could code in any language.

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2 Votes

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Yep

Mark Miller 12th Nov 2011

I remember having an argument with one my CS professors when I was an undergrad over the popular language issue. This was 22 years ago, now. He told me what you said. The "hot" languages come and go. What you need is skill in understanding how to learn a language so that you can learn any one that comes along.

It's hard for me to say if teaching only Lisp would prepare people for any language. C is quite different, isn't it? I understand that the functional aspect, and the idea of references would be similar. I'm talking about the memory model, and pointer arithmetic. Are there analogs to these things in Lisp? It just seems like there's a lot more that can "go wrong" in C.

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2 Votes

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Contributr

Yes, C has a lot of theoretical baggage

Sterling "chip" Camden 13th Nov 2011

But those are really all implementation details that you learn how to manage -- a good programmer starts with a functional understanding of the problem, then adapts the solution to the tools with which s/he must work. The cleanest C code is written in a style that is almost free of side-effects. That's a lot easier done in C than it is in COBOL or Basic.

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0 Votes

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indeed

apotheon 28th Nov 2011

There are a couple of schools in my general area that use C and/or C++ for introductory programming classes.

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0 Votes

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C++

dltaylor@... 21st Nov 2011

I am still in school at this time and as far as I know they are still teaching C++ here in Texas. My class was Learn C++ by making Games.

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Realtime process control on a 6809

oldbaritone 21st Nov 2011

I spent 6 years programming 6809 in C, running the embedded system controlling autonomous forklift trucks in a fully-automated warehouse. The vehicles were sent commands to position anywhere in a 500,000 sf warehouse within +-.75" both horizontally and vertically, then extract or place the load. No rails, just a grid of guide wires.

What amazed me from the day I arrived was that the system ran that accurately, using integer measurements, on a processor with 32K ROM and 8K RAM, clocked at 900 Khz. Typical latency was about 2 ms from interrupt to control response, and the relays (FET's weren't up to the task yet) had a mechanical response time of at least 20 ms.

Commutated SCRs switching 300-750 amps inductive load - talk about noise! Have you ever seen 4-0 copper wires visibly jump as the load switched on and off? (That's a welder wire, roughly the diameter of your thumb) 36VDC, not counting the KV and MV transients... wink

Good days. Fun.

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