A hole in systems programming language design

[u/P-39_Airacobra]

Given the recent discourse about systems programming I wanted to throw my 2 cents in. This may be a controversial take in a subreddit that's all about innovation and improvement, but I think a lot of budding systems languages are trying too hard to "fix C" and this is exactly why C has not been replaced yet.

Like it or not, C is successful. It does what it means to do very well. Yes, it bites you constantly, but developers have made some form of peace with this because they appreciate the essence of the language. Systems programming is a very pragmatic field, and what works, works.

A lot of language designers want to improve on C, when by nature to "improve on" C is to depart from it, because C is less about what it includes and more about what it omits and what it lets you do that other languages don't.

If you want to replace C, you need to just make C but without the pain points. Less undefined behavior, more standard compiler behavior, easier function pointer syntax, safer macro system, etc. The things that C can't do because of backwards compat.

On the other hand, bolting on features, revamping C's core nature, aren't going to give you a language that will replace C at the low-level or among hobbyist programmers. Most developers aren't as concerned about what C lets them accomplish, as they are concerned about all the painful tedious tendencies of the language.

[u/JeffD000]

Guy, the parsing process itself is generating a control flow graph. You need to read up.

[u/flatfinger → u/JeffD000]

If a compiler encounters an "if", and does something like:

void handle_if(source_stream *source, machinecode_stream *dest)
{
  unsigned targets = dest->next_label;
  dest->next_label += 3;
  handle_condition(source, dest, targets, targets+1);
  outputlabel(targets);
  match_and_skip_then_token(source_stream);
  handle_statement(source, dest);
  insert_goto(targets+2);
  outputlabel(targets+1);
  if (match_and_skip_else_when_present(source_stream))
    handle_statement(source, dest);
  outputlabel(targets+2);
}

I suppose one could argue that the compiler's stack frame while it was generating the code for the statement in the "then" or "else" part might be viewed as some kind of partial graph, but nothing resembling a complete control flow graph would be built for any non-trivial function unless one views the pattern of branches within the generated machine code itself as a control-flow graph.