I have met a couple of them in real life, and a few I have met online. The sample is not significant enough to draw any conclusions about their point of view and background.

I am more than interested in your opinions about the personality and political makeup of people who express this type of pro-C bigotry.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    212·
    5 months ago

    In my opinion, C purists are people who REALLY need to wash their fucking dishes, touch grass and get some sunlight. They get too worked up because “all the important things are written in C”, the important things being drivers, kernel and most basic stuff that OS needs.

    Whenever one talks about performance, just reply with “use Assembly” and their argument is immediately invalidated. You can also mention networking, fault tolerance and how Erlang does a much better job than C or C++ could do, which is why “real adults with real jobs” created it in the early 90s

    But mostly, it’s ironic that they’re becoming C-Conservatives, blaming the “hot new language” for bringing “the kids”. You can read the same kind of logic and disdain for C programmers, from LISP programmers, in the Unix Hater’s Handbook (1994)

    • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      4·
      5 months ago

      disdain for C programmers, from LISP programmers, in the Unix Hater’s Handbook (1994)

      I’m definitely looking that up.

    • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 months ago

      Nah, I like using C for low level stuff, it balances that it’s reasonably high level and procedural with pretty great performance, size and flexibility. ASM is faster, but you are slower when it comes to understanding someone else’s work.

      For projects that aren’t size or performance sensitive, write it in python or whatever the fuck you like, idgaf.

  • sudo42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    5 months ago

    Very few people have a truly diverse software experience base. Many humans without a large, diverse experience base have trouble imagining there are problems outside their own experience.
    There are millions of different problems that need software solutions. People with limited experience have opinions as to the “best” software.
    People with large, diverse experience bases tend to be a bit more circumspect and can understand there is no single best answer. The “best” software for a given task depends on many things, including the problem, the schedule, the availability of resources, etc.

  • Feathercrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    5 months ago

    They see the scale of high-level to low-level languages. They see that C is on the human-practical low end of this scale. They ascribe value to being on the low end of the scale. Tada! C is now objectively™ the best language!

  • iii@mander.xyzEnglish
    10·
    5 months ago

    The best way to engage them is to ask them about their projects. I usually find them to be very knowledgeable, have a lot to learn from, that you can mix in with your more recent languages.

    Win/win beats calling eachother bigot :)