How many people code in C these days, and if so, why?

[Berni]

Now honestly, I know you guys just LOVE your C and all that embedded stuff, but come on. You can't do that in C. No way. Not possible. GUI stuff? Logging to CSV file? Making realtime charts/graphs that auto-update scaling factors as data comes in? Hell, that would take weeks to do that in C. Maybe months. Or years.

Anyway, I apologize. Just messin' with ya. C RULES!!! 

Well there is a lot of truth to that actually.

Technically being able to easily barf out a json/XML file or make a GUI with a few lines is irrelevant of the languages features. It just means having a library that does that thing for you with a few magical function calls. But in practice C/C++ does not provide any more than the most basic functionality from the standard set of libraries that you get with it.

The difference with C# is that the standard set of libraries includes pretty much everything under the sun, from reading and saving jpeg/png images to making HTTPS requests to accessing a database to graphics rendering to sound input/output to asking the OS to not go to sleep mode...etc Okay sure not all of those libraries are really that well made but most of them work really well. So instead of looking for C++ libraries that do the thing, git cloneing them, figuring out how to make them work etc... all you do is stick a "using Windows.Media.Audio;" at the top of your code and you got your library. If the built in libraries don't cut it for the specific thing you want to do you can still go find a C# library online and stick it in.

Not saying that C should also have this, just that this is most of the reason C# is so nice for quickly throwing an app together. The C# language it self is nothing that special, its just Microsofts take on a more performant Java clone. They could have used pretty much any other sensible language and the result would be similar once its packed in with those libraries and a IDE that "just works". That's why VB.net exists, its pretty much C# with Basic flavored lipstick so that the syntax looks familiar to people coming from VB6. Only reason for the C letter in C# is to look familiar to the large userbase of existing C programmers even tho the only thing it really shares with C is the semicolon flavored lipstick. Might be silly but it worked.

[nctnico]

Now honestly, I know you guys just LOVE your C and all that embedded stuff, but come on. You can't do that in C. No way. Not possible. GUI stuff? Logging to CSV file? Making realtime charts/graphs that auto-update scaling factors as data comes in? Hell, that would take weeks to do that in C. Maybe months. Or years.

Not really. There is a whole flurry of libraries for that. Qt is probably among the most advanced ones.

[Karel]

Now honestly, I know you guys just LOVE your C and all that embedded stuff, but come on. You can't do that in C. No way. Not possible. GUI stuff? Logging to CSV file? Making realtime charts/graphs that auto-update scaling factors as data comes in? Hell, that would take weeks to do that in C. Maybe months. Or years.

Not really. There is a whole flurry of libraries for that. Qt is probably among the most advanced ones.

I was about to say that as well     And with Qt you are not stuck with windows which is a big plus as well.

[hans]

Arduino is C++, just saying.

Some thoughts to C++ on microcontrollers with limited memory:
IMHO, a really silly idea. Dynamic memory needs a memory manager, an this needs to take care of
fragmentation, free space recovery, garbage collection... Causing nondeterministic execution times, out of memory errors
when enough memory *should* be there, but not in 1 chunk as you need it and so on.
My strong advice: dynamic memory (malloc), OO string classes, ... forget it if you want a reliable app.
Arduino only works well if you never try something risky. Realtime/Interrupt stuff combined ith OO ? A nightmare.
Keep stack small, always know where your vars are, use C as an interface to machine language (L.Torvalds idea).
That should work on small platforms.

I agree that dynamic memory is a mess for embedded. But if you can avoid that, then my experience with C++ is the exact opposite. It's a bliss compared to plain C.

Case in point with the Linux source code: creating structs with function pointers to define several driver implementations according to a particular model, is much like object oriented programming. You can force it in C using that way, or switch to a C++ compiler and use classes.
Even more so, in C++ you get the option of compile-time inheritance and metaprogramming, which are very powerful tools for embedded devices in which we try to minimize run-time computations. These alone can drastically reduce the memory complexity and footprint of a program, while still offering flexibility in switching between hardware and simulation models of your BSP.
In C++ you can perform assertions using actual code, instead of using the rather convoluted preprecessor which quickly becomes a mess, and limits descriptions to pre-compile-time only (whereas in C++ you can use static_asserts with any constexpr function that's already available in the code base)

Keeping track of variables is a good thing indeed, so never use globals. If you can efficiently describe & manage data, it is also trivial to implement unit tests for them with side-effect free setup and teardown code. Unit tests have saved me a ton of time and debugging, in fact.. I hardly do any debugging on embedded devices except for BSP-related code.

[olkipukki]

Now honestly, I know you guys just LOVE your C and all that embedded stuff, but come on. You can't do that in C. No way. Not possible. GUI stuff? Logging to CSV file?

Why you (or somebody else) need to do this one-off stuff in C? 

And to log its behavior I used my C# data acquisition app (see below). Took me, on and off, a couple days to build that app and put the finishing touches.

Also, you probably do not need spend 2 days on that app...    (aka Python & Co)

[chriva]

Now honestly, I know you guys just LOVE your C and all that embedded stuff, but come on. You can't do that in C. No way. Not possible. GUI stuff? Logging to CSV file?

Why you (or somebody else) need to do this one-off stuff in C? 

And to log its behavior I used my C# data acquisition app (see below). Took me, on and off, a couple days to build that app and put the finishing touches.

Also, you probably do not need spend 2 days on that app...    (aka Python & Co)

Python is nice for certain things but you're a special kind of stupid if you run it on embedded stuff (aka micropython).

It's like sticking a moped engine in a car and expect it to move at a reasonable speed

[Nominal Animal]

Now honestly, I know you guys just LOVE your C and all that embedded stuff, but come on. You can't do that in C. No way. Not possible. GUI stuff? Logging to CSV file?

Why you (or somebody else) need to do this one-off stuff in C? 

And to log its behavior I used my C# data acquisition app (see below). Took me, on and off, a couple days to build that app and put the finishing touches.

Also, you probably do not need spend 2 days on that app...    (aka Python & Co)

Python is nice for certain things but you're a special kind of stupid if you run it on embedded stuff (aka micropython).

It's like sticking a moped engine in a car and expect it to move at a reasonable speed

You're special kind of stupid if you run C# on embedded stuff.  It's like sticking a car engine on a moped and expect it to be easy and safe to ride.

[chriva]

C# is like that embarrassing, drunk uncle at the family reunion that no one wants to talk to

[Berni]

Okay yeah i did forget about Qt.

I never used Qt and had the impression that its mostly just a multiplatform GUI library with an editor, but yeah i see it does indeed also have libraries for everything else too.

For me its mostly a case that i never got all that deep into C++ because it covers a middle ground that i rarely had the need for. For low level things i found plain C to be all i need. For small PC apps i didn't really care about memory usage or speed all that much (PCs are so ridiculously fast anyway). So i wanted to make use of the available abstraction and just ignore the hardware to make life easier in something like C#. Since i came from VB6 i was used to the VisualStudio IDE and WinForms, so it all felt familiar and it just all worked out of the box.  Since all of this ran at near C++ speeds it gave me little reason to go back again.

Sure C++ makes lots of sense for big projects where you have a team working on a actual sold software product. But for the small apps that people make alone on the side, then the benefits of C++ are not that significant. Especially on a forum like the EEVblog where most people who do programming are just various kinds of engineers that happen to also write software just to get stuff done (like me) rather than programing all day as a job. This is the same reason why VisualBasic rose to such popularity 20 years ago, its a easy to use and comes in a friendly IDE that just works out of the box while requiring very little knowledge to use. Python caters to the similar crowd. Its about getting things done quickly without being a major in computer science.

Its the same reason why Windows shows up in engineering so much. Its quick and easy to just buy a piece of software, install it and move on. Going for open source solutions just adds unnecessary extra steps that the engineer doesn't have time for since he is not there to do IT stuff or software development.

Just like race cars are not for everyone. Sure they are fast and perform better than all the other cars, but not everyone knows how to properly drive one, nor do they need to because a regular passenger car does the job just fine for them.

[engrguy42]

Okay, so let's get honest here... 

I hear a lot of talk of C and embedded systems. And I originally assumed that you guys were working in some large companies that designed microcontroller systems for, say, automobiles or other real world stuff.

But I'm starting to think that this strong bias in favor of C and embedded systems is actually a bunch of hobbyists working on Arduinos, who really have no experience in developing software in other languages for real world stuff?

Just asking...

Because it's hard to understand a "holier than thou", "drunk uncle" nonsensical bias against any tool that helps you to quickly get stuff done. I mean, it the real world, it's all about the best tool to get your problem solved as quickly and efficiently as possible.

[chriva]

Car manufacturers are usually using C++ if that answers your question.
Depending on system obv. I refer to the stuff doing the low level crap. No idea about cameras and infotainment systems

[coppice]

Car manufacturers are usually using C++ if that answers your question.
Depending on system obv. I refer to the stuff doing the low level crap. No idea about cameras and infotainment systems

They may be using C++ for the big processors in the infotainment system, but they aren't using it for the 100 or so MCUs spread around the car. MISRA C is the norm there.

[engrguy42]

Car manufacturers are usually using C++ if that answers your question.
Depending on system obv. I refer to the stuff doing the low level crap. No idea about cameras and infotainment systems

Thanks, but you're not answering the question I asked.

[coppice]

Okay, so let's get honest here... 

I hear a lot of talk of C and embedded systems. And I originally assumed that you guys were working in some large companies that designed microcontroller systems for, say, automobiles or other real world stuff.

But I'm starting to think that this strong bias in favor of C and embedded systems is actually a bunch of hobbyists working on Arduinos, who really have no experience in developing software in other languages for real world stuff?

Just asking...

Because it's hard to understand a "holier than thou", "drunk uncle" nonsensical bias against any tool that helps you to quickly get stuff done. I mean, it the real world, it's all about the best tool to get your problem solved as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Arduino isn't a C environment. Its a sort of twisted C++.

Try looking at the tools available for MCUs. You'll always find a usable C compiler, and, of course, there will be an assembler. You may find a C++ compiler, because its using the same back end as its accompanying C compiler, so it comes for free. However, if you try it you'll find its useless for anything but the largest memory MCUs. You are unlikely to find compilers for any other languages. That should tell you what professional developers use for MCUs. For larger embedded devices the languages are more diverse, but in the MCU world its assembly language, C, or something really niche.

[chriva]

Car manufacturers are usually using C++ if that answers your question.
Depending on system obv. I refer to the stuff doing the low level crap. No idea about cameras and infotainment systems

They may be using C++ for the big processors in the infotainment system, but they aren't using it for the 100 or so MCUs spread around the car. MISRA C is the norm there.

I was thinking PCM/ECU or other stuff that is safety related. And yes, lots of certifications and other shenanigans going on. Aaand yes. C / C++ for those. Don't think there are any other languages that have these certifications. Almost getting silly these days, you have processors watching over other processors to make sure things are not getting out of hand. It started with throttle body processors around 98 and has gotten progressively more overkill.

[Nominal Animal]

Okay, so let's get honest here... 

Have you ever used any other operating system besides Windows?

I actually used to maintain a dozen or so Windows machines in a Uni/office environment, before the turn of the century.  Had a couple of dozen Macs (pre-X), and a couple of Linux servers as well.  I do not have experience with current Windows (7-10), nor have I developed embedded apps for true realtime OSes.  I've been paid to develop software in about a dozen different programming languages.  More recently, I've split my efforts into helping others learn on one hand, and to scientific simulators and sensors and hardware interfaces to sensors; not exactly commercial stuff at all.  Yet, even with that wide a field of experience, I am very aware that it really is limited.  I ain't a Guru. You see that if you read my posts: I do not claim to know the truth,  I just claim to have some experience – hopefully not just my own (because emotional bias makes that unreliable IMO), but those I've seen others struggle with, repeatedly –, and am drawing my current opinions from those.

To be honest, your output sounds like a classic Dunning-Kruger case in the early part of their career and knowledge, where everything seems simple and straightforward and obvious, and those who discuss details and problems you've never encountered seem to be niggling about completely irrelevant stuff.  Simply put, the guy with his first hammer, shaking it and laughing at people discussing screws, bolts, adhesives, joinery, structural design, and tensegrity.

Maybe that's a misconception, who knows.  I am just saying that that is how your output looks to me.

[Berni]

Well the ~20 people software team here mostly makes use of a mix of both C and C++ for both embedded MCUs and under linux. But they also all use C# to build any PC apps (Stuff for configuration, user customization utilities, programing, communication, production tests etc). Here i see C++ on MCUs mostly used to organize code better using classes, namespaces etc.... So in the end it like C with some C++ syntax sugar sprinkled on top (But yeah even if you are not using 90% of C++ features its still C++).

But it's not just my personal liking for .Net CLR. I noticed that almost all job interviews i had back then had brought up C# at some point even tho the position i came for was a hardware engineer. Heck this place even handed me a programing test to solve at the interview where the first half was C and the other C# despite again hardware engineer. People i talked to at other companies also used C# a lot So at least here in Slovenia C# is apparently very popular among engineering companies.

If you go look at software development companies the picture is likely different, but i never even looked at those, since while i do find programing fun i would never want a job where that's all i do every day.

[coppice]

But it's not just my personal liking for .Net CLR. I noticed that almost all job interviews i had back then had brought up C# at some point even tho the position i came for was a hardware engineer. Heck this place even handed me a programing test to solve at the interview where the first half was C and the other C# despite again hardware engineer. People i talked to at other companies also used C# a lot So at least here in Slovenia C# is apparently very popular among engineering companies.

There was a time when interviews loved testing embedding people on their Pascal ability, yet nobody ever took Pascal seriously for embedded work. People used to have the knowledge to pass these interviews because colleges were teaching Pascal in those days, even though few forms of Pascal ever achieved much commercial success (Delphi being a big exception).

[ace1903]

Worked on mobile phone development, from the processor on development board up to phone ready for the marked.
Modern phone, Android based is 30% C code, maybe 5% cpp and rest java.
The whole TEE is C code, all security libraries are C based. Even user space android uses C libraries.
Try to make communication over a network without using
#pragma pack
Python is nice if you do stuff for fun.
Once I needed to repack data from big-endian to little-endian. Time needed python to do repacking was equal to all processing in C++ (filters ffts....)

[engrguy42]

Nominal Animal, with regards to any Dunning-Kruger I may be (or probably am) suffering from...

I started in the 80's, as an engineer, writing ASM to solve problems. One of my first was a line frequency meter which took regular samples of line frequency and reported them to my Z80-based computer. I also did tons of Basic.

Prior to that, in college I used FORTRAN for many years doing engineering projects for my engineering classes.

In my 45+ years as an engineer I've used and written many software tools to, mostly, simulate real world systems (feedback/control systems, mechanical equipment dynamic response, etc.). These have been mostly higher level vendor-specific versions of their scripting and other applications. Also stuff like MATLAB, and tons of other software. I've also developed software Python-like modules for stuff like graphics/video compositing apps, etc. And as I've mentioned I've done a lot of programming of data acquisition devices like the Labjack, using their C/C++ interfaces. 

I also have Linux (Cinnamon Mint & Ubuntu) installed on my desktops and have used and programmed it on and off over the years, though I admit I have little tolerance for the command line as well as other user-unfriendly stuff  .  Oh, and I also have a Raspberry Pi with its version of Linux that I've prgrammed a lot. But no Arduino..

A week or so ago I tried to get back in to Python (a short journey which I outlined previously in this thread), and decided the benefit wasn't worth the cost.

Separately I've done a TON of graphics-based and other programming in C++, mostly along the lines of ray tracing, using stuff like DirectX and OpenGL. I've also done many tons of C# apps for a myriad of purposes over the years. Also NVIDIA C/C++ CUDA for parallel GPU computations and such, not only graphics but other engineering-based parallel problems.

I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting, but I agree with you. I have severe Dunning-Kruger. As my signature below says:

"The best engineers know enough to realize they don't know nuthin"   

[madires]

Not really. There is a whole flurry of libraries for that. Qt is probably among the most advanced ones.

I still got some Motif developer licenses for linux and several weighty tomes from O'Reilly.

[madires]

I hear a lot of talk of C and embedded systems. And I originally assumed that you guys were working in some large companies that designed microcontroller systems for, say, automobiles or other real world stuff.

But I'm starting to think that this strong bias in favor of C and embedded systems is actually a bunch of hobbyists working on Arduinos, who really have no experience in developing software in other languages for real world stuff?

I'm experienced in both, in hobbyist projects and non-embedded real world stuff. And after learning two BASIC variants, Z80, COMAL80, Modula, 68000 and three Pascal variants I stopped counting programming languages. Today I mostly do C and bash, while expecting some Python in the near future.

[Nominal Animal]

Nominal Animal, with regards to any Dunning-Kruger I may be (or probably am) suffering from...

I specifically didn't say that! I said that's what your posts read like.

I find it very odd that someone with your experience would so aggressively ridicule others from using whatever tool they think is best for a particular problem, and discussing what that problem domain might be for C (that is not well covered by higher-level languages like C++) – that is the topic of this thread, after all.  I'd really like to know why.  Did all those other projects fail, or what?

though I admit I have little tolerance for the command line as well as other user-unfriendly stuff 

Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.  The OS you use is just another tool; whatever works for you, works for you.

A week or so ago I tried to get back in to Python (a short journey which I outlined previously in this thread), and decided the benefit wasn't worth the cost.

When you found out Qt5 didn't integrate into Visual Studio, you dropped it on the floor.  That has nothing to do with the language or its libraries; you just basically said that because it does not integrate nicely into Visual Studio, it won't fit your workflow.

And that is fine.  But don't berate others if they don't have your VS fixation.  Whether the language and its libraries are well integrated or not into VS is not a sane measure of the language in general.

The likegeeks PyQt5 tutorial seems to tell how to avoid the hassles in Windows, where to find the Qt Designer, and even that you do not need to "compile" the .ui file(s) you create in Designer, as you can just load them in your Python code using PyQt5.uic.loadUi().  So, it looks like a sensible place to start, if you are using Windows, and interested in Python + Qt5.  (seems, because I don't use Windows, so I can't verify.)

That said, PyQt5 documentation is annoyingly hard to locate; one will want to bookmark https://www.riverbankcomputing.com/static/Docs/PyQt5/module_index.html for that.  For Python 3, https://docs.python.org/3/library/ is the page to start with.

If there is any interest, I'd be happy to provide a small example in a new thread in the Programming subforum.

[IDEngineer]

I have little tolerance for the command line as well as other user-unfriendly stuff

That's funny, the vast majority of the one-off tools I write are command line based because I'm simply trying to get some task done, and don't want to waste time on a "pretty" GUI. In my humble experience, creation (and the seemingly endless fine-tuning) of a fancy front end takes far more time than writing the code that actually does the work in question. If it's not a commercially shipping product, I don't care what it looks like... I care that it gets the job done, and the faster the better.

This is not meant as an insult to those with different priorities, just another data point to consider.

[SiliconWizard]

I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting, but I agree with you. I have severe Dunning-Kruger. As my signature below says:

"The best engineers know enough to realize they don't know nuthin"

A phrase in a signature is proof of your humility?
I'm sorry, but so far, none of your posts have really shown any sort of humility, so this is hard for others to see it between the lines.
And your posts are consistently off topic too, but I'll admit you're not the only one here.

All I've read from you are attempts at being funny (I guess?) while trying to belittle pretty much everyone else, and then bold statements like "this or that can't be done with this or that language", which was consistently false. You seem pretty good at twisting the logic of others' arguments to your advantage too, and ignore whatever you feel like ignoring if it's convenient.

Whatever tools you use for your projects, that's really fine. No problem with that. You seem to be evangelizing CS, that's your problem. Some have had a few arguments against CS, but really nobody told you you were using the wrong tools either.

I have rarely seen anyone here actually not respecting other people's experience and opinions to this level. It's amazing. Surely you're a very good and very humble engineer.

Unfortunately, this thread now is IMHO growing a significant probability of ending up locked due to it completely derailing. Nice job.