OSDev.org

bzt wrote:It is a fact that C language has an ABI, it is specified well,

No, the C language doesn't have an ABI. it's not in the language spec (the C standard), therefore it isn't there. The SYS V and MS ABIs are not part of the C language standard. This is not a hard thing for anyone to verify. Repeating it over and over and insulting other people won't make it true.

bzt wrote:I'm looking forward the day when Rust becomes the new COBOL

I don't think you understand what that expression means. COBOL is/was a highly successful languages used for many many decades. As recently as 2006-2012, COBOL was still used by 60% of organizations (more than C++). Even today COBOL is still in use. Saying that Rust could become the new COBOL would mean that it will outlast almost every other programming language that ever existed.

I used this comparison because the story of C++ is starting to look a lot like COBOL. What is causing COBOL's downfall is that you can't find programmers for it anymore. The same is starting to happen for C++. Languages like Rust and Go are just accelerating this trend.

kzinti wrote:No, the C language doesn't have an ABI.

Say that again.

kzinti wrote:I don't think you understand what that expression means.

Oh, but I do. It means just like COBOL, Rust will loose it's developers. Actually according to the latest StackOverflow survey, this has already begun.
Developers Reveal Why Rust Programming Language Is Losing Popularity
Not to mention that it turned out that SO devs who voted Rust as the most liked language actually aren't using Rust in their everyday projects:

This issue of slow adoption of Rust programming language was first noticed in Stack Overflow’s 2019 survey. There we saw that majority of developers had a positive outlook towards Rust, but 97% of them had never actually used it.

Huh, that's pretty harsh!

Losing developers is phase one. Then comes phase two, when the number of new projects written in Rust starts to decline, and after that there's no turning back. Finally comes phase three (where COBOL is at right now) when there will be simply no-one who could maintain the code base any more.

kzinti wrote:COBOL would mean that it will outlast almost every other programming language that ever existed.

You don't know what "outlast" mean. Despite how old C is (lot older than COBOL, let me tell you), there are countless new projects started in C. When was the last time that a new project was started in COBOL?

Now you're suggesting that a language, which
1. doesn't have a stable ABI,
2. doesn't even have a formal specification at all,
3. incapable of describing something simple like a directed graph
4. after the first hype already started to lose popularity
will be really successful, now that's just a fool's errand.

Read this: Why I'm dropping Rust, a guy who tried to port nanogui to Rust and gave it up. His conclusion summarize perfectly well my opinion on Rust:

For nanogui, and CEGUI uses this concept as well, each widget has a pointer to a parent and a vector of pointers to its children. How does this concept map to Rust? There are several answers:
1. Use a naive Vec<T> implementation
2. Use Vec<*mut T>
3. Use Vec<Rc<RefCell<T>>>
4. Use C bindings
[...]
The problems I've encountered in option 1 through 3 leave me to believe that option 4, making bindings to C, would be the only working alternative for the library I'm trying to write. And now that I'm at this stage, I'm thinking, why write bindings to C when I could just as well be writing in C? Or C++?

Cheers,
bzt

You have completely missed my point about COBOL (or you are trolling).

COBOL was invented in 1960. C was invented in 1972. Anyone can easily verify this. Stop trolling.

I never said or implied anything about Rust. I know nothing about it and I am not interested. Your arguments for/against it are lost on me. Or maybe you are trolling?

Having a conversation with you is hopeless. You are unable or unwilling to read what people post and reply something sensible.

kzinti wrote:You have completely missed my point about COBOL (or you are trolling).

Look who's talking! You have completely missed my point about C ABI. No, I haven't missed your point about COBOL, I've just merely point out that how many percentage of the projects use a particular language has absolutely nothing to do with how much it outlast other languages. That's measured by how many new projects are started in a language. The fact that there are still a lot of COBOL projects out there won't save the language, because companies will be forced to hire someone to reimplement those projects in another language. They left with no other choice because they simply can't hire COBOL programmers any more.

kzinti wrote:COBOL was invented in 1960. C was invented in 1976. Anyone can easily verify this. Stop trolling.

Yet, most successful COBOL compilers were written in C, anyone can verify this. Why is that I wonder?

kzinti wrote:I never said or implied anything about Rust.

Oh really? How can we interpret these?
"Saying that Rust could become the new COBOL"
"The same is starting to happen for C++. Languages like Rust and Go are just accelerating this trend."

kzinti wrote:Having a conversation with you is hopeless.

I agree, having a conversation with someone who says "No, the C language doesn't have an ABI." is indeed pointless Man, I still can't believe that you have actually said that... ROTFL! Sorry, I don't want to be rude, but this is just hilarious!

Have a nice day,
bzt

bzt wrote:

kzinti wrote:I never said or implied anything about Rust.

Oh really? How can we interpret these?

You are quoting a reply out of context. My reply was clearly to your post just above it where you said the following:

bzt wrote: Now you're suggesting that a language, which
1. doesn't have a stable ABI,
2. doesn't even have a formal specification at all,
3. incapable of describing something simple like a directed graph
4. after the first hype already started to lose popularity
will be really successful, now that's just a fool's errand.

I never suggested or implied anything like that.

bzt wrote: "Saying that Rust could become the new COBOL"

I never said that Rust could become the new COBOL. I said that C++ is. C++ has been around for a long time, is not going to completely go away, will stay in legacy systems for a long time and is rapidly losing programmers. There are a lot of parallels with COBOL here. But I don't see any between Rust and COBOL.

Here is what I said since you can't even figure out how to cut & paste:

kzinti wrote: Probably has something to do with the fact that it is becoming impossible to find and hire competent C++ programmers. C++ is becoming the new COBOL (if it's not already).

You are in fact the one who started comparing Rust to COBOL, not me. That's why I said you misunderstood what I was saying.

bzt wrote: "The same is starting to happen for C++. Languages like Rust and Go are just accelerating this trend."

Yes, the success of new programming languages like Rust and Go are accelerating the demise of C++. This is what I meant. This is not a statement on Rust, it is a statement on C++. This is happening because students don't learn C++ anymore, they learn "modern" languages instead.

Clearly you were under the impression that I was comparing Rust to COBOL, but that wasn't the case. You might want to think twice before telling people that they have reading comprehension problems.

bzt wrote:"No, the C language doesn't have an ABI." is indeed pointless Man, I still can't believe that you have actually said that... ROTFL! Sorry, I don't want to be rude, but this is just hilarious!

The C language standard still doesn't define an ABI. Keep repeating it. It won't change. If you want to change my mind, you'll have to point me to which section of the standard defines it.

Arguing with BZT about this is pointless. The guy believes he's God and he knows everything. He claims that C has an ABI yet he can't actually prove it and as usual has to point to unofficial documents. The C standard does *not* specify an ABI, therefore it doesn't have one. Just because ABIs exist for it does in no way mean that they are the "official" ABIs, but BZT just can't be bothered to actually read what we say.
I'm leaving this discussion. I've stated the truth -- and whether Bzt believes that what I'm saying is true or not is irrelevant because he can't disprove what I say [at all] without making himself look like a troll. I've got more mature people to talk to who actually know what they're talking about. I mean, seriously, saying that C has an ABI just because the SysV ABI and MS ABIs exist is like saying that assembly language has an ABI. Sheesh.
@Bzt: if you want to troll with your tripe, take it elsewhere. How you've avoided getting banned from this forum is beyond me, because if this were anywhere else you'd be long gone, I'm pretty sure of that.

Ethin wrote:How you've avoided getting banned from this forum is beyond me, because if this were anywhere else you'd be long gone, I'm pretty sure of that.

In the days of D&I and anti-bullying, I also do not understand how he is allowed to continue posting such aggressive, insulting and demeaning posts.

This reflects very poorly on osdev.org.

kzinti wrote:

Ethin wrote:How you've avoided getting banned from this forum is beyond me, because if this were anywhere else you'd be long gone, I'm pretty sure of that.

In the days of D&I and anti-bullying, I also do not understand how he is allowed to continue posting such aggressive, insulting and demeaning posts.

I'm a member of some pretty toxic communities myself and trollish behavior like that which bzt displays would not be tolerated in any of them. Insulting people, of course, is bzt's signal of surrender, because he knows that we're right but he always has to have the last word. So, instead of doing the mature thing and saying "Okay, guys, I stand corrected, your right, I was wrong," he resorts to insulting and demeaning comments to make himself feel better. I'm just confused on why the mods haven't done anything about him because last time I checked, his behavior was against the rules. And okay, sometimes he's helpful, but the majority of posts I've seen from him are insulting and demeaning, and that's usually because someone's contradicted him, and its obvious that he hates being contradicted.
Anyway, as I said I'm outa here. @Op, if you want an actual answer to your question, go ask on the Rust users forum. That way you can avoid our resident troll.

I think the statement that C is older than COBOL shows a stunning level of ignorance from someone posting on these forums But it makes as much sense as the rest of the poster's comments.

Pontificating on topics that you are clearly ignorant of is not clever.

Rust and C are both great languages. Use the one that suits you without arrogantly dismissing those who make a different choice.

Ethin wrote:Arguing with BZT about this is pointless. The guy believes he's God and he knows everything. He claims that C has an ABI yet he can't actually prove it and as usual has to point to unofficial documents. The C standard does *not* specify an ABI, therefore it doesn't have one. Just because ABIs exist for it does in no way mean that they are the "official" ABIs, but BZT just can't be bothered to actually read what we say.
I'm leaving this discussion. I've stated the truth -- and whether Bzt believes that what I'm saying is true or not is irrelevant because he can't disprove what I say [at all] without making himself look like a troll. I've got more mature people to talk to who actually know what they're talking about. I mean, seriously, saying that C has an ABI just because the SysV ABI and MS ABIs exist is like saying that assembly language has an ABI. Sheesh.
@Bzt: if you want to troll with your tripe, take it elsewhere. How you've avoided getting banned from this forum is beyond me, because if this were anywhere else you'd be long gone, I'm pretty sure of that.

I support that.
I think a de-facto ABI does count as an ABI, too. And maybe Rust is losing developers. And I think he's not as insulting as someone else. But as iansjack said, Rust is good for some programmers.

Bzt should be less flaming in his replies. When many people think he's too aggressive, I think that's a strong hint that he should change his posting style. Actually he's not a troll (A troll wants to spread chaos.) I think the correct term is "pest".

And he's not banned because that's not the mod's job but Chase's job. I reported a guy here saying something like "Get the money from your university back." And nothing seems to have happened.

Greetings
Peter

Yes, but what Bzt was arguing was that C/C++/Ada has an official ABI, which it does not. The de-facto ABI is not the official ABI. He was arguing, also, how Rusts reference doesn't have any ABI information (which he called "lame"), despite the fact that specifing Rusts ABI is entirely unnecessary and Rust provides you tools for controlling the ABI where necessary. In all other circumstances where knowing the ABI is useless, you shouldn't have to care.
And I don't think it should just be Chase's job to ban people. The job of a Moderator, as I see it, is to enforce the rules and to keep order even if the main administrator is unavailable. If someone is being a troll or pest, and have repeatedly indicated that they won't change their tune and they instead wish to continue trolling or being a pest, they shouldn't be allowed in a community, end o story.

Ethin wrote:And I don't think it should just be Chases job to ban people. The job of a Moderator, as I see it, is to enforce the rules and to keep order even if the main administrator is unavailable. If someone is being a troll or pest, and have repeatedly indicated that they won't change their tune and they instead wish to continue trolling or being a pest, they shouldn't be allowed in a community, end o story.

Yes, I think so, too. But moderators (or at least klange) said that they never were intented to do that. I. too, think, mods should act on rule-violations like this. Maybe we can convince the mods to actually do that.

Greetings
Peter

Ethin wrote:He claims that C has an ABI yet he can't actually prove it and as usual has to point to unofficial documents.

Yeah, and somehow he does not actually accept that very same document as evidence that a certain compiler switch will do what it says it will. And yes, I'm still holding a grudge.

Sometimes arguing with bzt is like nailing pudding to a wall.

nullplan wrote:Sometimes arguing with bzt is like nailing pudding to a wall.

Haha, funny comparison...
Someone said he will take everything Bzt said(or wrote) with a grain of salt. Maybe that's what people here should actually DO!

Greetings
Peter

PeterX wrote:Someone said he will take everything Bzt said(or wrote) with a grain of salt. Maybe that's what people here should actually DO!

I tried that. I tried having conversations with him. It didn't work. I like to think that other peoples here have/are trying to do the same. But he continues to be aggressive, insulting, demeaning and spreading lies just to have the last word in every thread.

Why are you trying to defend what is clearly unacceptable behaviour?

Any type of non-inclusive behaviour needs to be called out, otherwise it festers. Staying silent and/or ignoring it doesn't make it go away.