In article <875yn5dkm1.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com>,
Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> wrote:
>Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> writes:
>[...]
>> All programs are written for Windows initially, since regardless of
>> the intended target platform, all everyday development and debugging
>> is done under Windows in Visual Studio anyway. For example, nobody in
>> their right mind develops Linux applications under the actual Linux
>> (again, aside from niche areas and... well... weirdos).
>
>I don't know whether you're trolling or mistaken, but that's simply not
>true. If you actually believe that, consider that other people might
>have experiences that differ from yours.
>
>In my previous job, for example, I worked on Linux, targeting embedded
>Linux, using gcc, and I didn't even have a Windows machine at work.

In his terminology, then, you are clearly a "niche" and a "statistical
anomaly".

--
The randomly chosen signature file that would have appeared here is more than 4
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in compliance with said RFCs, the actual sig can be found at the following URL:
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On 4/19/2022 7:26 PM, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
> On 4/19/2022 7:07 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> writes:
>>> On 4/18/2022 9:44 AM, Jack Lemmon wrote:
>>
>>> When code does not compile in Visual Studio it is effectively useless.
>>> Compatibility with Visual Studio is a hard requirement for all C and C++
>>> code in professional world.
>>
>> Now that's funny.   I've been programming "in the professional world",
>> in C and C++ for forty years, and Visual Studio has _never_ been part
>> of that process.  It's been considered a toy compiler by most.
>
> Um...
>
> I while ago some guy in a C and C++ programming I had to post a piece of
> C++ code that used a lambda expression. Some old-timer guy responded to
> my post with something passive-aggressive along the lines of: "This is
> bogus. I've been professionally programming in C for 40 years, but I
> have never seen this syntax". I was genuinely stopped in my tracks for a
> minute at least for a minute at least, speechless: so many things are
> completely off in it.
>
> Your post above conveys pretty much the same dumbfounding feel to me.
>
> As I has already stated previously, aside from some understandable niche
> areas, which amount to no more than mere statistical anomalies,
> everything in professional programming world is done in Visual Studio,
> regardless of the target platform. But since we are talking more about
> the compilers, than about the development environments, what today's
> state of affairs clearly demonstrated is that at certain level of
> complexity community-developed software is still incapable of competing
> with commercially-backed software. It is probably more about C++ that C,
> but today Microsoft C and C++ compilers clearly dominate as the highest
> quality industrial-grade compilers, with Clang being close second. And
> the catastrophic decay of GCC is probably the most telling sign of this
> situation. That one survives (just barely) purely on half-dead legacy
> code and the inertia of low-quality educational usage, as in the example
> above.

All of that sounds like a stretch to me. Let's say that this is your own
opinion, which you are obviously entitled to. Making wild statements
like Visual Studio being the universal standard is, well, let's say
temerarious.
It's more likely to be the universal standard in your own universe.

>
> Yes, there are people who manage to get by using just any compiler, but
> (and I apologize for re-using the analogy I already used more than once)
> that is like saying that some people ride a mono-cycle to work. Yes,
> such people exist and I actually know a professional programmer who
> routinely rides to work on a mono-cycle.
>

I don't use Visual Studio for anything that is not supposed to target
Windows. And I don't ride a mono-cycle. I bet it's fun, though :)

On 4/19/22 13:26, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
> On 4/19/2022 7:07 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> writes:
>>> On 4/18/2022 9:44 AM, Jack Lemmon wrote:
>>
>>> When code does not compile in Visual Studio it is effectively useless.
>>> Compatibility with Visual Studio is a hard requirement for all C and C++
>>> code in professional world.
>>
>> Now that's funny. I've been programming "in the professional world",
>> in C and C++ for forty years, and Visual Studio has _never_ been part
>> of that process. It's been considered a toy compiler by most.
>
> Um...
>
> I while ago some guy in a C and C++ programming I had to post a piece
> of C++ code that used a lambda expression. Some old-timer guy
> responded to my post with something passive-aggressive along the lines
> of: "This is bogus. I've been professionally programming in C for 40
> years, but I have never seen this syntax". I was genuinely stopped in
> my tracks for a minute at least for a minute at least, speechless: so
> many things are completely off in it.

I realize that it can be dumbfounding to learn, and hard to believe,
that the programming environment you're overwhelmingly most familiar
with is not, in fact universal, and is, at best, a minority choice in
other parts of the programming universe that you're not familiar with.
Nonetheless,that is in fact the case.

On 4/19/2022 11:26 AM, James Kuyper wrote:
> On 4/19/22 13:26, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
>> On 4/19/2022 7:07 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>> Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> writes:
>>>> On 4/18/2022 9:44 AM, Jack Lemmon wrote:
>>>
>>>> When code does not compile in Visual Studio it is effectively useless.
>>>> Compatibility with Visual Studio is a hard requirement for all C and C++
>>>> code in professional world.
>>>
>>> Now that's funny. I've been programming "in the professional world",
>>> in C and C++ for forty years, and Visual Studio has _never_ been part
>>> of that process. It's been considered a toy compiler by most.
>>
>> Um...
>>
>> I while ago some guy in a C and C++ programming I had to post a piece
>> of C++ code that used a lambda expression. Some old-timer guy
>> responded to my post with something passive-aggressive along the lines
>> of: "This is bogus. I've been professionally programming in C for 40
>> years, but I have never seen this syntax". I was genuinely stopped in
>> my tracks for a minute at least for a minute at least, speechless: so
>> many things are completely off in it.
>
> I realize that it can be dumbfounding to learn, and hard to believe,
> that the programming environment you're overwhelmingly most familiar
> with is not, in fact universal, and is, at best, a minority choice in
> other parts of the programming universe that you're not familiar with.
> Nonetheless,that is in fact the case.

That's actually close to the root from which the nonsense spewed out by
some other participants of this conversation is growing. Such strange
concepts as "being familiar with some tool" (be that a specific compiler
or a specific platform), "writing programs to run on Windows", "working
on Linux" and so on - they simply don't exist in professional
programming world. Using such concepts in an argument would immediately
betray incompetence and immaturity. Which, again, only makes me and many
others respond with a polite patronizing smile (or just shake our heads
in disbelief) when people openly demonstrating such immature
incompetence boast about "programming for forty years" or somesuch. (My
previous example with lambda expressions suddenly is becomes more
befitting than I expected it to be.)

Professional programming resides way higher in the food chain than the
tools we use and platforms we program for. We don't "familiarize
ourselves" with the tools. It is the other way around: tools
"familiarize ourselves" with our demands and compete at satisfying them.
That's what makes us completely impartial and indifferent wrt specific
tools and, ultimately, proficient with any of them and knowledgeable
about all of them. We don't learn through the tools, we don't substitute
"GCC" for "C". The latter is a mistake likely responsible for
catastrophic abundance of "victims of GCC" limping throgh the world
today, who for some bizarre reason call themselves "C programmers". And
that's the knowledge and the authority derived from it that I'm using
here. I'm not trying to behave ostentatiously: all this is just mundane
everyday facts of professional programming world.

P.S. Your attempt at trolling through "you're overwhelmingly most
familiar with" is amusing, since I'm writing under my real name and
everyone here is perfectly familiar with my level of expertise.

--
Best regards,
Andrey Tarasevich

Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> writes:
[...]
> That's actually close to the root from which the nonsense spewed out
> by some other participants of this conversation is growing. Such
> strange concepts as "being familiar with some tool" (be that a
> specific compiler or a specific platform), "writing programs to run on
> Windows", "working on Linux" and so on - they simply don't exist in
> professional programming world. Using such concepts in an argument
> would immediately betray incompetence and immaturity. Which, again,
> only makes me and many others respond with a polite patronizing smile
> (or just shake our heads in disbelief) when people openly
> demonstrating such immature incompetence boast about "programming for
> forty years" or somesuch. (My previous example with lambda expressions
> suddenly is becomes more befitting than I expected it to be.)
[...]

My own experience completely contradicts your claims.

"[W]riting programs to run on Windows" is exactly what I do in
my current job. "[W]orking on Linux" is exactly what I did in my
previous job.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
Working, but not speaking, for Philips
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

On 19/04/2022 20:10, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> In article <875yn5dkm1.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com>,
> Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> writes:
>> [...]
>>> All programs are written for Windows initially, since regardless of
>>> the intended target platform, all everyday development and debugging
>>> is done under Windows in Visual Studio anyway. For example, nobody in
>>> their right mind develops Linux applications under the actual Linux
>>> (again, aside from niche areas and... well... weirdos).
>>
>> I don't know whether you're trolling or mistaken, but that's simply not
>> true. If you actually believe that, consider that other people might
>> have experiences that differ from yours.
>>
>> In my previous job, for example, I worked on Linux, targeting embedded
>> Linux, using gcc, and I didn't even have a Windows machine at work.
>
> In his terminology, then, you are clearly a "niche" and a "statistical
> anomaly".
>

Me too, in that case. I've been programming in C (amongst other things)
professionally for nearly three decades, and I have never written any C
code targeting Windows. (I did once write some C++ code for Windows,
using Borland's tools rather than MS tools, long ago.) I've used
Windows for development, but not as the target - and I /hugely/ prefer
Linux as the development host.

On 19/04/2022 21:22, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:

> That's actually close to the root from which the nonsense spewed out by
> some other participants of this conversation is growing. Such strange
> concepts as "being familiar with some tool" (be that a specific compiler
> or a specific platform), "writing programs to run on Windows", "working
> on Linux" and so on - they simply don't exist in professional
> programming world.
If you had been suggesting that /most/ professional programmers develop
for and on Windows, and that MSVC is the tool of choice for most such
programmers, you'd look a lot less ignorant and a lot less foolish.

MSVC is undoubtedly a major compiler (and IDE) for C++ development, and
no one will argue that the desktop is not still dominated by Windows.
But C++ is not the major choice of language for Windows development - C#
is, I believe, and there are other options such as Java. Delphi
(Pascal), Python, F#, Visual Basic and other languages are minor but
non-negligible choices for Windows desktop development.

On the server side, C# is an option - but most languages are
cross-platform (Java, Javascript, PHP, Python, Go), since Windows is not
remotely dominant there.

Notice a missing language? C. It is very rarely used professionally
for Windows programming. It is a poor fit for Windows coding, and MSVC
has traditionally been terrible for it. Most who think they are using
MSVC for C programming, are using C++ but limiting themselves mostly to
a roughly C compatible subset.

C is primarily used for :

Low-level driver code
High performance or cross-platform libraries
Legacy code
Embedded development
Masochists who think it's more fun than high-level languages
People learning to program

Windows desktop - the primary target for MSVC - is not there.

(Pretend there's a smiley beside the word "masochists" :-) )

On 4/19/2022 2:14 PM, David Brown wrote:
> On 19/04/2022 21:22, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
>
>> That's actually close to the root from which the nonsense spewed out by
>> some other participants of this conversation is growing. Such strange
>> concepts as "being familiar with some tool" (be that a specific compiler
>> or a specific platform), "writing programs to run on Windows", "working
>> on Linux" and so on - they simply don't exist in professional
>> programming world.
> If you had been suggesting that /most/ professional programmers develop
> for and on Windows, and that MSVC is the tool of choice for most such
> programmers, you'd look a lot less ignorant and a lot less foolish.

No, that is not what I'm saying. And thanks, sometimes I dream of those
simpler times when I could make myself "look foolish". Good times, good
times...

Anyway, "looking foolish" is no longer a concern in the context of this
thread, where some other posters have already broken through such lows
that someone who's merely able to tie one's own shoelaces looks like a
genius.

Look at yourself:

> Windows desktop development.
> ...
> C. It is very rarely used professionally
> for Windows programming. It is a poor fit for Windows coding, and MSVC
> has traditionally been terrible for it.
> C is primarily used for :
> ...
> Masochists who think it's more fun than high-level languages
> People learning to program
>

> Windows desktop - the primary target for MSVC - is not there.

The above has no basis in reality. It just sounds like standard talking
points of a troll or, in the best case, of a vocal ignoramus - someone
who has zero understanding of the topic.

This bit is my favorite and is worthy of a separate mention:

> Most who think they are using
> MSVC for C programming, are using C++ but limiting themselves mostly to
> a roughly C compatible subset.

This piece of nonsense seems to have a life of its own. A tenet in this
outlandish and nonsensical religion. And a mark that instantly reveal
someone who doesn't know what they are talking about.

Yes, I've seen completely green newbies who believe in this bizarre idea
that "C in MSVC is compatible subset of C++" because nobody ever told
them that there is real C in MSVC. Newbies simply have no idea how to
use real C. And their teachers usually don't either out of plain
incompetence.

I've seen grown up "professional programmers" who consciously refuse to
believe that MSVC comes with a dedicated C compiler in a sorta "Flat
Earth Society" way: they kinda know about it, but they react with
frantic, almost schizophrenic attempts to fight the reality that
"attacks" the weird imaginary universe that exists in their minds.

I won't even mentions reddit-grade trolls..

How does this crap manage to entrench itself in these heads? Were is it
really coming from? I'm at a loss.

Again, barring trolls and schizos, so far all I see here is plain and
simple incompetence. Incompetent people frantically, nail and tooth,
trying to defend their position in the proverbial ladder of incompetence.

Calm down, boys. This is not an attack. Again, all this is just mundane
everyday facts of professional programming world.

--
Best regards,
Andrey Tarasevich

środa, 20 kwietnia 2022 o 01:57:52 UTC+2 Andrey Tarasevich napisał(a):
> everyday facts of professional programming world.

im not quite reading this thread (so im not quite aware who states what and who fights for what) but i see such phrases like 'professional programming world' it looks a bit "self-contradicting"

this is becouse what most people do is they are (like this word is used) 'ponys' it is a crowd who do what others do and chosse what is not wisest but what fits to average mind which typically takes what is 'trendy' and rejects what is deeply logically good

so that proffesional programing world is imo either a ponys or a verry narrow "boheme" ;c what is popular is not professional (at least i belive, coz im kinda outsider to this "professional programming world" you probably got on mind ;c )

so as i said i dont belive what you call proffesional programming world is so professional neither i belive this sentence (phrase) "proffesional programing world" is either professional ;c

środa, 20 kwietnia 2022 o 02:24:24 UTC+2 fir napisał(a):
> środa, 20 kwietnia 2022 o 01:57:52 UTC+2 Andrey Tarasevich napisał(a):
> > everyday facts of professional programming world.
> im not quite reading this thread (so im not quite aware who states what and who fights for what) but i see such phrases like 'professional programming world' it looks a bit "self-contradicting"
>
> this is becouse what most people do is they are (like this word is used) 'ponys' it is a crowd who do what others do and chosse what is not wisest but what fits to average mind which typically takes what is 'trendy' and rejects what is deeply logically good
>
> so that proffesional programing world is imo either a ponys or a verry narrow "boheme" ;c what is popular is not professional (at least i belive, coz im kinda outsider to this "professional programming world" you probably got on mind ;c )
>
> so as i said i dont belive what you call proffesional programming world is so professional neither i belive this sentence (phrase) "proffesional programing world" is either professional ;c

you could eventually turn this sentence into 'popular programming world' and that io would be more true (if its tru what you said as i kinda doubt...i doubt in it becouse that kind of talk "i know what is used" i find as generally false as what is used is quite complex/vary a lot (got some experience with people talking that mode and i found then myself cheated by them..that claims it showed not to be true)

but as i said im not reading what all this talk is about

On 4/19/22 15:22, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
....
> P.S. Your attempt at trolling through "you're overwhelmingly most
> familiar with" is amusing, since I'm writing under my real name and
> everyone here is perfectly familiar with my level of expertise.

I don't care how much experience you have with any particular
programming environments. You might have a lot of experience with a lot
of different environments, but if you can claim with a straight face, as
though it were true, that "When code does not compile in Visual Studio
it is effectively useless", then there's a large portion of the
programming world that you're ignorant of.

On Tuesday, 19 April 2022 at 20:22:45 UTC+1, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
> On 4/19/2022 11:26 AM, James Kuyper wrote:
> > On 4/19/22 13:26, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
> >> On 4/19/2022 7:07 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> >>> Andrey Tarasevich <andreyta...@hotmail.com> writes:
> >>>> On 4/18/2022 9:44 AM, Jack Lemmon wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> When code does not compile in Visual Studio it is effectively useless.
> >>>> Compatibility with Visual Studio is a hard requirement for all C and C++
> >>>> code in professional world.
> >>>
> >>> Now that's funny. I've been programming "in the professional world",
> >>> in C and C++ for forty years, and Visual Studio has _never_ been part
> >>> of that process. It's been considered a toy compiler by most.
> >>
> >> Um...
> >>
> >> I while ago some guy in a C and C++ programming I had to post a piece
> >> of C++ code that used a lambda expression. Some old-timer guy
> >> responded to my post with something passive-aggressive along the lines
> >> of: "This is bogus. I've been professionally programming in C for 40
> >> years, but I have never seen this syntax". I was genuinely stopped in
> >> my tracks for a minute at least for a minute at least, speechless: so
> >> many things are completely off in it.
> >
> > I realize that it can be dumbfounding to learn, and hard to believe,
> > that the programming environment you're overwhelmingly most familiar
> > with is not, in fact universal, and is, at best, a minority choice in
> > other parts of the programming universe that you're not familiar with.
> > Nonetheless,that is in fact the case.
> That's actually close to the root from which the nonsense spewed out by
> some other participants of this conversation is growing. Such strange
> concepts as "being familiar with some tool" (be that a specific compiler
> or a specific platform), "writing programs to run on Windows", "working
> on Linux" and so on - they simply don't exist in professional
> programming world. Using such concepts in an argument would immediately
> betray incompetence and immaturity. Which, again, only makes me and many
> others respond with a polite patronizing smile (or just shake our heads
> in disbelief) when people openly demonstrating such immature
> incompetence boast about "programming for forty years" or somesuch. (My
> previous example with lambda expressions suddenly is becomes more
> befitting than I expected it to be.)
>
> Professional programming resides way higher in the food chain than the
> tools we use and platforms we program for. We don't "familiarize
> ourselves" with the tools. It is the other way around: tools
> "familiarize ourselves" with our demands and compete at satisfying them.
> That's what makes us completely impartial and indifferent wrt specific
> tools and, ultimately, proficient with any of them and knowledgeable
> about all of them. We don't learn through the tools, we don't substitute
> "GCC" for "C". The latter is a mistake likely responsible for
> catastrophic abundance of "victims of GCC" limping throgh the world
> today, who for some bizarre reason call themselves "C programmers". And
> that's the knowledge and the authority derived from it that I'm using
> here. I'm not trying to behave ostentatiously: all this is just mundane
> everyday facts of professional programming world.
>
> P.S. Your attempt at trolling through "you're overwhelmingly most
> familiar with" is amusing, since I'm writing under my real name and
> everyone here is perfectly familiar with my level of expertise.
>
This isn't the professional programming I recognise. And I've been
a professional programmer for about 30 years, with an interlude
to do a PhD, which required a different approach to prgramming.

From an engineering perspective, it's often the right thing to write
to a layer of abstraction, so that the program and the platform it runs
on are separated. However often this isn't allowed. Apple ban
IPhone applications that run through an emulation layer from their
App store, which means that, in most cases, such applications are
not commercially viable. They've got two reasons. Firstly, they want
to offer a consistent and Apple-associated experience to the users,
and secondly, they want it to be more difficult to port IPhone applications
to competing platforms.

Then a lot of professional programs are not generic "applications"
that take an input in some format, process it or allow the user to edit
it, the produce results. They are part of what we call an "ecosystem".
They interact intimately with other applications and the operating system.
Users tend to want an integrated experience. Not always, sometimes
the computer is performing one discrete task, but for more general-
purpose applications, they expect to drag and drop, to share data with
other applications via the clipboard, to update when linked files update.

If you mean that, if you are familiar with one API, one language, one
IDE, one operating system, you ought to be able to transfer to another
without too much problem, then I'd agree. But employers often don't.
They look to recruit people who have direct experience in that niche,
because they can be productive immediately, and because it is less of
a risk. There are few high end jobs where the employer will say
"programming language irrelevant", but it's rare to see such an advert,
and even in those jobs, a recruit won't be able to choose his own
programming language.

On Wednesday, 20 April 2022 at 06:06:21 UTC+1, james...@alumni.caltech.edu wrote:
> On 4/19/22 15:22, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
> ...
> > P.S. Your attempt at trolling through "you're overwhelmingly most
> > familiar with" is amusing, since I'm writing under my real name and
> > everyone here is perfectly familiar with my level of expertise.
> I don't care how much experience you have with any particular
> programming environments. You might have a lot of experience with a lot
> of different environments, but if you can claim with a straight face, as
> though it were true, that "When code does not compile in Visual Studio
> it is effectively useless", then there's a large portion of the
> programming world that you're ignorant of.
>
Code that won't compile under Visual Studio isn't useless, but it is much less
useful than code that will.

On 20/04/2022 08:22, Malcolm McLean wrote:
> On Wednesday, 20 April 2022 at 06:06:21 UTC+1, james...@alumni.caltech.edu wrote:
>> On 4/19/22 15:22, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
>> ...
>>> P.S. Your attempt at trolling through "you're overwhelmingly most
>>> familiar with" is amusing, since I'm writing under my real name and
>>> everyone here is perfectly familiar with my level of expertise.
>> I don't care how much experience you have with any particular
>> programming environments. You might have a lot of experience with a lot
>> of different environments, but if you can claim with a straight face, as
>> though it were true, that "When code does not compile in Visual Studio
>> it is effectively useless", then there's a large portion of the
>> programming world that you're ignorant of.
>>
> Code that won't compile under Visual Studio isn't useless, but it is much less
> useful than code that will.

Much of the code I write does not compile under Visual Studio. Changing
it so that it would do so, would make it much /less/ useful.

To be fair here, there are some parts of some of my programs where
support for compiling under Visual Studio /is/ useful, because I have a
few customers who want to use it in simulation or testing using their
choice of host computer and toolchain.

On 2022-04-20 Malcolm McLean wrote in comp.lang.c:

> Code that won't compile under Visual Studio isn't useless, but it is much less
> useful than code that will.

You are not the first to write the above, but I could not find the
'source' for this comment...

Almost all code will compile under Visual Studio. Visual Studio is an
IDE, not a compiler. I believe it comes with a standard compiler, but it
can call any compiler, if you configure it correctly. Last time I used
VS, it was with the Microsoft Azure Sphere SDK. Configured like that, it
uses cmake and gcc to compile code for a Cortex M3 and A7 processor.

So code that will not compile under VS is code that will not compile
with any compiler that can be made to run on Windows. Calling code like
that useless seems fair to me. ;-)

--
Stef

Unix: Some say the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once.
-- Karl Lehenbauer

On Wednesday, 20 April 2022 at 08:06:19 UTC+1, David Brown wrote:
> On 20/04/2022 08:22, Malcolm McLean wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 20 April 2022 at 06:06:21 UTC+1, james...@alumni.caltech.edu wrote:
> >> On 4/19/22 15:22, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
> >> ...
> >>> P.S. Your attempt at trolling through "you're overwhelmingly most
> >>> familiar with" is amusing, since I'm writing under my real name and
> >>> everyone here is perfectly familiar with my level of expertise.
> >> I don't care how much experience you have with any particular
> >> programming environments. You might have a lot of experience with a lot
> >> of different environments, but if you can claim with a straight face, as
> >> though it were true, that "When code does not compile in Visual Studio
> >> it is effectively useless", then there's a large portion of the
> >> programming world that you're ignorant of.
> >>
> > Code that won't compile under Visual Studio isn't useless, but it is much less
> > useful than code that will.
> Much of the code I write does not compile under Visual Studio. Changing
> it so that it would do so, would make it much /less/ useful.
>
> To be fair here, there are some parts of some of my programs where
> support for compiling under Visual Studio /is/ useful, because I have a
> few customers who want to use it in simulation or testing using their
> choice of host computer and toolchain.
>
You write embedded applications. I don't know exactly what you work on,
but an example might be an electronic hearing aid. You've got a microphone
and a speaker. You read in a waveform from the microphone, digitise it,
Fourier transform it, filter it to reduce noise and retain parts likely to be
human speech, Fourier transform it again to get it back into the time
domain, and feed it out to the speaker.
The code that talks to the microphone and the speaker will be hardware-
specific. It's only of use for that particular hearing aid. The code that
does the Fourier transform might be on the CPU, or it might use a DSP.
If it uses the DSP, then again, it's unlikely to be useful except on an identical
DSP. If it's on the CPU, it can be written in normal C. Then it will compile
under Visual Studio, and you can use the same code, for example in a
Zoom-type application where you want to filter the microphone.
So the code that will compile on Visual Studio is more generally useful.
That doesn't mean that DSP code is useless, or that sometimes because
of hardware, power, cost, weight and other contraints, you might not have\
to use a DSP instead of a general purpose processor.

On 20/04/2022 09:38, Malcolm McLean wrote:
> On Wednesday, 20 April 2022 at 08:06:19 UTC+1, David Brown wrote:
>> On 20/04/2022 08:22, Malcolm McLean wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, 20 April 2022 at 06:06:21 UTC+1, james...@alumni.caltech.edu wrote:
>>>> On 4/19/22 15:22, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
>>>> ...
>>>>> P.S. Your attempt at trolling through "you're overwhelmingly most
>>>>> familiar with" is amusing, since I'm writing under my real name and
>>>>> everyone here is perfectly familiar with my level of expertise.
>>>> I don't care how much experience you have with any particular
>>>> programming environments. You might have a lot of experience with a lot
>>>> of different environments, but if you can claim with a straight face, as
>>>> though it were true, that "When code does not compile in Visual Studio
>>>> it is effectively useless", then there's a large portion of the
>>>> programming world that you're ignorant of.
>>>>
>>> Code that won't compile under Visual Studio isn't useless, but it is much less
>>> useful than code that will.
>> Much of the code I write does not compile under Visual Studio. Changing
>> it so that it would do so, would make it much /less/ useful.
>>
>> To be fair here, there are some parts of some of my programs where
>> support for compiling under Visual Studio /is/ useful, because I have a
>> few customers who want to use it in simulation or testing using their
>> choice of host computer and toolchain.
>>
> You write embedded applications. I don't know exactly what you work on,
> but an example might be an electronic hearing aid. You've got a microphone
> and a speaker. You read in a waveform from the microphone, digitise it,
> Fourier transform it, filter it to reduce noise and retain parts likely to be
> human speech, Fourier transform it again to get it back into the time
> domain, and feed it out to the speaker.
> The code that talks to the microphone and the speaker will be hardware-
> specific. It's only of use for that particular hearing aid. The code that
> does the Fourier transform might be on the CPU, or it might use a DSP.
> If it uses the DSP, then again, it's unlikely to be useful except on an identical
> DSP. If it's on the CPU, it can be written in normal C. Then it will compile
> under Visual Studio, and you can use the same code, for example in a
> Zoom-type application where you want to filter the microphone.
> So the code that will compile on Visual Studio is more generally useful.
> That doesn't mean that DSP code is useless, or that sometimes because
> of hardware, power, cost, weight and other contraints, you might not have\
> to use a DSP instead of a general purpose processor.

Most of that sounds reasonable. But in reality, code written for small
embedded systems is almost /never/ of any use on desktops or anywhere
else but similar types of embedded systems.

Let's look more at your example. As you say, hardware-specific and
other low-level parts are very target-specific and of no use or interest
outside the particular device. And DSP code for an actual DSP is rarely
very portable or useful elsewhere - you can have complications like
16-bit char, fixed point arithmetic, special memory setups, etc.

Suppose we have some DSP filter code that is written in C for a normal
processor - that's the best-case scenario. Would it be useful in a
desktop or mobile application? Not a chance. It will be specific to
the /application/, even if it is not specific to the hardware. It will
be much more limited than you'd have for a "big" processor - limited and
fixed resolution, frequency, number of taps, etc. It will be optimised
for speed for the single particular use-case.

There may still be a point in making it compilable in MSVS - as an aid
to simulation and testing. That can often be a useful tool in such
developments. But the code will never be re-used in completely
independent applications on Windows.

And there is a big cost in making it compatible with MS compilers on
Windows. First, there is the limitation of the language. I am not
familiar with MSVC's C support - by reputation, it is poor for C99 (and
above), but I have also heard that has improved. Certainly you do not
want to limit yourself to C90 - you want "inline" and "restrict" for
this kind of thing, and C99 is simply much nicer to code for than C90.

Second, you may want compiler-specific features to aid optimisation. In
my code, I make use of gcc attributes for constant or pure functions,
various built-ins, and other features. You can usually get portability
for that by using conditional compilation, but it messes up your code -
it's a cost.

Third, you will likely want target-specific features. If you are
targeting an ARM Cortex M4, you'll want to use ARM's headers for optimal
use of the processor's arithmetic features. Again, wrapping and
conditional compilation can make the code portable at the cost of making
it messier and harder to work with.

It might still be worth going through this, in order to get the benefits
of simulation and testing on a PC. The cost of supporting MSVC is,
however, higher than the cost of supporting gcc or clang on a PC.

It is not clear (to me, at least) in this thread how much we are talking
about MS's IDE alone, or MS's own C compilers - the MSVS IDE doesn't
care about the details of the compiler and is quite happy with gcc
extensions or C standards beyond MS compiler support. It is not
uncommon to find people using MSVS running on Linux for projects
cross-compiled with gcc for embedded targets. It is only for the
compiler and the target that there is a real portability question.

On Wednesday, 20 April 2022 at 11:16:23 UTC+1, David Brown wrote:
>
> It is not clear (to me, at least) in this thread how much we are talking
> about MS's IDE alone, or MS's own C compilers - the MSVS IDE doesn't
> care about the details of the compiler and is quite happy with gcc
> extensions or C standards beyond MS compiler support. It is not
> uncommon to find people using MSVS running on Linux for projects
> cross-compiled with gcc for embedded targets. It is only for the
> compiler and the target that there is a real portability question.
>
I and some others were talking about the C compiler which ships with
Visual Studio, whilst other people were talking about cross compilers
which can be set up to use the Visual Studio IDE. Until that was pointed
out, there was a certain degree of talking at cross purposes.

On Wednesday, April 20, 2022 at 7:26:18 AM UTC-3, Malcolm McLean wrote:
> On Wednesday, 20 April 2022 at 11:16:23 UTC+1, David Brown wrote:
> >
> > It is not clear (to me, at least) in this thread how much we are talking
> > about MS's IDE alone, or MS's own C compilers - the MSVS IDE doesn't
> > care about the details of the compiler and is quite happy with gcc
> > extensions or C standards beyond MS compiler support. It is not
> > uncommon to find people using MSVS running on Linux for projects
> > cross-compiled with gcc for embedded targets. It is only for the
> > compiler and the target that there is a real portability question.
> >
> I and some others were talking about the C compiler which ships with
> Visual Studio, whilst other people were talking about cross compilers
> which can be set up to use the Visual Studio IDE. Until that was pointed
> out, there was a certain degree of talking at cross purposes.

I use MS C compiler. C99 and C11.
Today Visual Studio 2022 does not have a "create a new C project"
In case someone wants to try, create a C++ project and then rename
..cpp to .c files. After that go project settings and change to C11.
There are also two preprocessors. The "old one", and the C conformant one
and this can be changed on project settings.
Few features are missing.. variable modified types, atomic, [static ] in
function declarations.
A lot of features are implemented including _Generic.

On 4/20/22 03:31, Stef wrote:
> On 2022-04-20 Malcolm McLean wrote in comp.lang.c:
>
>> Code that won't compile under Visual Studio isn't useless, but it is much less
>> useful than code that will.
>
> You are not the first to write the above, but I could not find the
> 'source' for this comment...
>
> Almost all code will compile under Visual Studio. Visual Studio is an
> IDE, not a compiler. I believe it comes with a standard compiler, but it
> can call any compiler, if you configure it correctly. Last time I used
> VS, it was with the Microsoft Azure Sphere SDK. Configured like that, it
> uses cmake and gcc to compile code for a Cortex M3 and A7 processor.
>
> So code that will not compile under VS is code that will not compile
> with any compiler that can be made to run on Windows. Calling code like
> that useless seems fair to me. ;-)

The vast majority of my experience has been with UNIX-like systems,
primarily (and most recently) Linux systems. However, my two most recent
years of work experience have included programming on Windows using
Visual Studio, so in principle I should be aware of that fact. I've even
used Visual Studio with Clang, but I wasn't thinking about that when I
wrote my response.
However, that's reasonable, because that can't be what Andrey actually
meant, regardless of what he actually said. He made his comment as part
of his objections to code which wouldn't compile due to it's use of
GCC-specific features. From what you're saying, by choosing the right
compiler, such code could compile under Visual Studios. I suspect that
what he actually was thinking of, was code which wouldn't compile using
MSVC++. My responses were based upon that understanding.

On 4/20/2022 1:57 AM, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
> On 4/19/2022 2:14 PM, David Brown wrote:
>> On 19/04/2022 21:22, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
>>
>>> That's actually close to the root from which the nonsense spewed out by
>>> some other participants of this conversation is growing. Such strange
>>> concepts as "being familiar with some tool" (be that a specific compiler
>>> or a specific platform), "writing programs to run on Windows", "working
>>> on Linux" and so on - they simply don't exist in professional
>>> programming world.
>> If you had been suggesting that /most/ professional programmers develop
>> for and on Windows, and that MSVC is the tool of choice for most such
>> programmers, you'd look a lot less ignorant and a lot less foolish.
>
> No, that is not what I'm saying. And thanks, sometimes I dream of those
> simpler times when I could make myself "look foolish". Good times, good
> times...

Sure you sound nostalgic enough of such foolishness to try and revive it
whenever you can.

>
> Anyway, "looking foolish" is no longer a concern in the context of this
> thread, where some other posters have already broken through such lows
> that someone who's merely able to tie one's own shoelaces looks like a
> genius.
>
> Look at yourself:
>

Look, this attitude of yours is the best highway to end up in anyone's
killfile, just saying...

<rant snipped>

On Monday, 18 April 2022 at 17:47:47 UTC+1, Jack Lemmon wrote:
> char get_char(const char *format, ...) __attribute__((format(printf, 1,
> 2)));
>
> I downloaded a free library file from this link:
> <https://github.com/cs50/libcs50/releases>
>
> But when I try to compile it, it faults at line 58 and other lines
> containing attribute world. So what exactly is likely to be wrong with it.?
> The library was created by Harvard uni for students to learn C
> programming so it must work on a Windows system using visual Studio, but
> it doesn't. What changes should I make to make it work?

Try adding:

#define __attribute__(x)

This effectively ignores those gnuC-specific attributes.

Here they're probably not important (I expect that it enables the compiler to check the format string or some such thing).

On Tuesday, 19 April 2022 at 22:14:31 UTC+1, David Brown wrote:

> C is primarily used for :
>
> Low-level driver code
> High performance or cross-platform libraries
> Legacy code
> Embedded development
> Masochists who think it's more fun than high-level languages
> People learning to program
>
>
> Windows desktop - the primary target for MSVC - is not there.

C is also used as a target language for quite a few languages that also run on Windows.

For example, Nim, FreeBasic (or maybe FreePascal, or both), GHC, although they tend to bundle gcc rather than anything else.

When I used to do this for a while, I was testing my generated code with up to half a dozen different Windows C compilers, plus versions running on Linux. Since I didn't bundle a C compiler, I didn't want to have to stipulate which one should be used; C is C.

On Wednesday, 20 April 2022 at 02:57:52 UTC+3, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
> On 4/19/2022 2:14 PM, David Brown wrote:
> > On 19/04/2022 21:22, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
> >
> >> That's actually close to the root from which the nonsense spewed out by
> >> some other participants of this conversation is growing. Such strange
> >> concepts as "being familiar with some tool" (be that a specific compiler
> >> or a specific platform), "writing programs to run on Windows", "working
> >> on Linux" and so on - they simply don't exist in professional
> >> programming world.
> > If you had been suggesting that /most/ professional programmers develop
> > for and on Windows, and that MSVC is the tool of choice for most such
> > programmers, you'd look a lot less ignorant and a lot less foolish.
> No, that is not what I'm saying. And thanks, sometimes I dream of those
> simpler times when I could make myself "look foolish". Good times, good
> times...
>
> Anyway, "looking foolish" is no longer a concern in the context of this
> thread, where some other posters have already broken through such lows
> that someone who's merely able to tie one's own shoelaces looks like a
> genius.
>
> Look at yourself:
>
> > Windows desktop development.
> > ...
> > C. It is very rarely used professionally
> > for Windows programming. It is a poor fit for Windows coding, and MSVC
> > has traditionally been terrible for it.
> > C is primarily used for :
> > ...
> > Masochists who think it's more fun than high-level languages
> > People learning to program
> >
>
> > Windows desktop - the primary target for MSVC - is not there.
>
> The above has no basis in reality. It just sounds like standard talking
> points of a troll or, in the best case, of a vocal ignoramus - someone
> who has zero understanding of the topic.

What has basis in reality? The headhunters are outright annoying.
Everyone capable gets more personal proposals than any other kind
of spam. Yet for Windows Desktop they hunt often C# and sometimes
C++. May even want x64 assembler savvy but C is rarely if ever
mentioned.

>
> This bit is my favorite and is worthy of a separate mention:
>
> > Most who think they are using
> > MSVC for C programming, are using C++ but limiting themselves mostly to
> > a roughly C compatible subset.
>
> This piece of nonsense seems to have a life of its own. A tenet in this
> outlandish and nonsensical religion. And a mark that instantly reveal
> someone who doesn't know what they are talking about.
>

It was the case over decade ago or so. The C compiler of Visual Studio
was so bad that it was easier to transform C code into common subset
of C and C++ and to compile it with its C++ compiler.

> Yes, I've seen completely green newbies who believe in this bizarre idea
> that "C in MSVC is compatible subset of C++" because nobody ever told
> them that there is real C in MSVC. Newbies simply have no idea how to
> use real C. And their teachers usually don't either out of plain
> incompetence.

Maybe its C compiler has become better now but few know nor care as
no shops are starting C projects for Visual Studio. Or maybe they are
already saturated full with specialists so do not headhunt.

>
> I've seen grown up "professional programmers" who consciously refuse to
> believe that MSVC comes with a dedicated C compiler in a sorta "Flat
> Earth Society" way: they kinda know about it, but they react with
> frantic, almost schizophrenic attempts to fight the reality that
> "attacks" the weird imaginary universe that exists in their minds.
>
> I won't even mentions reddit-grade trolls..
>
> How does this crap manage to entrench itself in these heads? Were is it
> really coming from? I'm at a loss.

People just remember that it was crappy, have tons of other things to do
and so find no motivation to download that visual studio and try it. The
old windows laptop I'm typing it right now has only mingw compilers
installed. I feel zero motivation to install visual studio to it. As for why?
Even if I download some open source code here to see ... it more likely
compiles with mingw than with vs.

> Again, barring trolls and schizos, so far all I see here is plain and
> simple incompetence. Incompetent people frantically, nail and tooth,
> trying to defend their position in the proverbial ladder of incompetence.
>
> Calm down, boys. This is not an attack. Again, all this is just mundane
> everyday facts of professional programming world.

What facts? Read your garbage above? You call other people incompetent
religious newbies, trolls and schizos ... with zero other argumentation,
statistics or cites and say that it is not classical attack-the-messenger
logical fallacy? It is attack only, nothing else left there.

On 20/04/2022 17:50, bart c wrote:
> On Tuesday, 19 April 2022 at 22:14:31 UTC+1, David Brown wrote:
>
>> C is primarily used for :
>>
>> Low-level driver code
>> High performance or cross-platform libraries
>> Legacy code
>> Embedded development
>> Masochists who think it's more fun than high-level languages
>> People learning to program
>>
>>
>> Windows desktop - the primary target for MSVC - is not there.
>
> C is also used as a target language for quite a few languages that also run on Windows.
>
> For example, Nim, FreeBasic (or maybe FreePascal, or both), GHC, although they tend to bundle gcc rather than anything else.
>

None of these are particularly widespread, but you are right that this
is a use-case.

(I suspect it is becoming more common to target llvm/clang rather than
gcc these days, as the architecture of llvm is better suited to using it
as a library and the llvm internal representation is specified and
documented if you want to go a step further in compilation but not do
the final target code generation.)

For generated C, it should be relatively easy to match to different
compiler variants. And of course you won't have any need of things like
the "format" attribute in the first post of this thread, since such
warnings and checks will be handled at a higher level.

> When I used to do this for a while, I was testing my generated code
> with up to half a dozen different Windows C compilers, plus versions
> running on Linux. Since I didn't bundle a C compiler, I didn't want
> to have to stipulate which one should be used; C is C.
>

That's a reasonable choice. (Another reasonable choice would be to
offer options for different outputs tuned to different compilers.)