> C or C++ let you do whatever you want.

C and C++ force you to code in the C and C++ ways. It may that that's what you want, but they certainly dont let me code how I want to code!

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mgaunard 4 days ago | parent [-]

There is no C or C++ ways. It's widely known that every codebase is its own dialect.

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nicoburns 4 days ago | parent [-]

There are lots of C and particularly C++ ways, but you're still restricted. Want to use methods in C: nope, you can't. Want language-level tagged unions and pattern matching in either language: nope. Same for guaranteed tail call optimisation and a bunch of other things.

This is especially true for C which supports almost nothing (it doesn't even have a sensible array type!). But is also true for C++: while it supports a lot, it doesn't support everything.

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mgaunard 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

The funny part is that all of these things are easy to achieve as libraries/paradigms.

Methods in C, just have function pointers as members. Common in many codebases.

Guaranteed tail calls, all the compilers guarantee that function calls that are a return expression are tail calls.

Tagged union in C++, it's trivial as a library, see std::variant for a bad example of it, and all the various monadic/pattern-matching variants (pun intended) people have written. C is at a disadvantage here due to lack of lambdas, but I'm sure people have built stuff using some GCC extensions.

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bigfishrunning 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

what changes, in your opinion, would need to be made to the C array type to make it "sensible"? C's array is simplistic, but I don't think it's not "sensible"...

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nicoburns 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

It would need to store a length and not decay to a pointer when passed to a function.

	▲	mgaunard 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		the length is part of the type.

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mgaunard 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

consider the C++ std::array, which exists to make arrays behave like normal objects.

You can do the same in C by wrapping your array in a struct.