Why I Always End Up Going Back to C

C sounds nice if your task is simple enough, or at least if you can decompose this to a series of loosely-connected simple-enough tasks.

But sometimes, there is an inherent complexity in what you are trying to implement, then C becomes way, way complex than C++. You build stuff, and there is so many manual steps, and none of them must be missing, or things will subtly break.

A good example is "gstreamer", the multimedia streaming framework. It is implemented in pure C. It needs to use basic data structures, so it uses GLib. It also need to support runtime-defined connection graph, so it is built on top of GObject.

Yes, build times are amazingly fast. But you pay for it - look at something simple, like display_name property[0]. There is display_name member, and PROP_DISPLAY_NAME enum, and switch case in setter (don't forget to free previous value!) , and switch case in getter, and it's manually installed in class_init, and you need to manually free it in dispose (except they forgot this).

So many places just for a single property, something that would have been 1 or 2 lines in a well-structured C++ app. And unlike C++, you cannot make simple rules like "never use char* except for 3rd party libs" - it's all those multi-point checklists which are not even written down. A

[0] https://github.com/GStreamer/gst-plugins-good/blob/master/sy...

I did a lot of c++ in the mid-90s, often on teams with experienced C programmers new to C++.

They had little appetite for C++, it was 90% mgmt saying ‘use the shiny new thing we read about’. I was the FNG who ‘helped’ them get thru it by showing them the tools & lingo that would satisfy mgmt.

OOP is non-scientific and the snake-oil hype made it cancerous. C++ has ballooned into an absurd caricature. It obfuscates business logic with crypto-like strength, it doesn’t clarify anything. I feel like a war criminal. Replacing C++ is one thing but ridding the world of the OOP rot is a far deeper infection.

I later spent years doing my Typhoid Mary bit in the Java community before abandoning the heresy. Repent and sin no more, that’s all one can do.

> The language shows you the machine, a machine which is not forgiving to mistakes.

Assembly does that, C not really, it is a myth that it does.

> In C, you can see what the machine is doing. Allocations don’t hide behind constructors, and destructors don’t quietly run during stack unwinding. You can profile at the machine-code level without feeling like you’re peeling an onion, appropriately shedding tears the whole time.

This is why explicit control flow is important design goal for systems programming language. This is basically 2/3 of core design principles in Zig.

> Code gets simpler because it has to, and architecture becomes explicit.

> The real goal isn’t to write C once for a one-off project. It’s to write it for decades. To build up a personal ecosystem of practices, libraries, conventions, and tooling that compound over time. Each project gets easier not because I've memorized more tricks, but because you’ve invested in myself and my tools.

I deeply appreciate this in the C code bases I work in (scientific computing, small team)

First off, I want to congratulate you on reaching this milestone. I think this is the state where the most seasoned programmers end up. They know how to write code that works and they don't need a language to "help" or "guide" them.

Enjoy!