[NCLUG] A brief note about C and potential successors.

[Bob Proulx]

Brian Sturgill wrote:
> I asked about Go usage at the last meeting and was met with quite a number
> of people expressing disdain that I thought C should be replaced.

I think people were mostly focused on the Arduino part.  Since the
topic of C was introduced as running C on an Arduino.  At that point
we were all thinking "Arduino!"

Because I know at least half of the comments were coming from people
like me that have spent some time learning both Go-lang and Rust and
other languages.  I don't think people were disparaging those
languages.  And in fact for me when I am just trying to solve a random
problem I reach for a memory safe garbage collected language, I won't
say it but most of you know which one, most of the time.

I love the C language but recognize that I am not always working alone
and must work on a team with other people and as I have often said,
other people are almost always the problem. :-)

Old sayings, adapted for modern times:

The Rust programmer says memory is too important to be left to the
system.  The programmer should have full control of it.

The Go-lang programmer says memory is too important to be left to the
programmer.  The system should have full control of it.

And the interesting thing is that *both* viewpoints are correct!

Bob