C

[hftvol]

"]Previous posters use index based on worldwide usage of languages.". -> Which this company, a poster linked to, NEVER disclosed how they compute those rankings. Saying that "we base it on Google" is ridiculous and an affront to intelligently thinking people who look for backup to claims. I look at the worldwide MOST POPULAR website for professional programmers which is unarguably StackOverflow, they have by far the most traffic and the top programmers are all there (Jon Skeet, Gravel to just name two).

Maybe you want to explain why a website that has very little traffic and shows a language ranking in terms of popularity but rejects to disclose the exact arithmetic behind it suddenly trumps the top resource for most every serious programmer, which is SO?
I must be missing something but I am a logically thinking person and bullshit really gets me off, especially when some wannabes disguise themselves behind anonymous aliases and make claims nobody can back up. I on the other hand pointed to SO's stats, they show in very transparent ways which languages are most discussed and I think it would be very hard to argue against the high correlation between languages under discussion and popularity and degree of usage of such language.

But hey, why do we not kid ourselves a little longer, it seems to be in fashion to bash Microsoft, no matter they do something right or not.

P.S.: Re Microsoft sense of humor, well I find those guys pretty serious and boring once you have tried to get some of the stuff installed for NodeJS, Apache, reinvent the wheel thousands of times with PhP vs stuff that is standard with ASP.Net, and all those other funny Fortran, Haskel, ....and other languages and frameworks where you have to search through text or xml based files to set server settings, change file pathes, and other funny things. After I got used to that kind of fun and how long it takes to get some of those alternative (aka esoteric non Microsoft stuff going) you will find the guys at MS are really not that funny but rather solid.

Quote from vicirek:

Previous posters use index based on worldwide usage of languages. Not every company or programmer (worldwide again) wants to be dependent on Microsoft compiler or can afford one (maybe there are some restrictions on export licenses?). In addition despite multi language versions and documentation some may prefer to stay with what they already know.

There is another issue. Microsoft wants to sell new versions. This may force to refactor software every 2 years with the release of new framework and also it creates some issues with deployment and program maintenance (it works on my development computer situation)

Another issue for some is Microsoft approach to new and old technologies. They just suddenly abandon some and create new and that confuses people because they wander if it is worth the investment.

But I agree, .Net is best development environment and produces good and fast code and is easy to use once you stay current and are used to Microsoft sense of humor.

 

[vicirek]

Quote from hftvol:

"]Maybe you want to explain why a website that has very little traffic and shows a language ranking in terms of popularity but rejects to disclose the exact arithmetic behind it suddenly trumps the top resource for most every serious programmer, which is SO?

But hey, why do we not kid ourselves a little longer, it seems to be in fashion to bash Microsoft, no matter they do something right or not.

I just checked out of curiosity and there is page TIOBE Programming Community Index Definition showing some stuff which I did not attempt to read. This is commercial site and the single purpose of such index could be to generate traffic and sales - nothing else. SO tags may be also not 100% scientific and dependent on many factors like number of amateur programmers, students, knowledge of English etc.

As it was pointed earlier C vs C# is not a real issue.

Microsoft is solid company and nobody is bashing them but the reality is that they change direction too often due to competition and usually recognize it after the fact. They were targeting Java hence .Net now is IPhone, Google etc, and you have Windows 8 and new programming environment with few missing dlls and other changes to programming environment. This is the reality and is dependent on commercial needs and staying competitive. Even if you wrote C# program faster then others by the time it is ready to be released it is obsolete because of new operating system or new framework. You have to understand that people may want to stay with something more neutral, proven and independent from one commercial platform.

 

[misaki]

@vicirek:

Thanks for your words of support. It's just a pity that a thread with great potential got ruined by some dude who has too much time on his hands; writes with the punctuation and style of a teen's Facebook wall; refuses to examine his gut feeling when presented with quantitative evidence by multiple sources and persons, and tells virtual tales about his programming achievements (which by the way, are clearly subpar if you read between the lines about his data storage procedure) that we know he'd never have the guts to support by pasting a single line of code.

I'd give you the opposite advice and suggest that you save time arguing with him, as it is time-consuming to deal with a person who takes things so personally, does not have the same work priorities and opportunity costs, and is evidently prepared to sacrifice a huge fraction of his teenage daily life to reach a lose-lose conclusion.

 

[hftvol]

While I agree that Microsoft has its own flaws in how they roll out new versions please keep in mind that on the programming front they have done a pretty decent job with .Net in particular and this is not going away any time soon. WPF is an example where the MS team has done a horrible job. But again to counter balance that ASP.NET is a prime example how software can evolve and how many useful features were added because the team listened to developers. It is now probably the web programming language of choice regardless of it being a bit heavier around the edges than PhP or cohorts. Also on the CMS DotNetNuke literally "nukes" out Drupal and all other non ASP.NEt platforms.

See, my issue is that some of the hardcore Linux crowd still thinks Microsoft is stuck in a hole like it was years ago. Nowadays the world runs on more Windows web servers than Linux machines, Java is losing in popularity against .Net, C++ still shines in terms of unmanaged code development but still most new projects are worked on using .Net, ASP.NET (web front). I will not respond to those who question that because they can easily go to programming related sites with most traffic and convince themselves but they refuse to do so.

But back to the topic, yes this thread is about applications of C in today's coding environment. I made my points clear that there are niche areas where C still shines. For everything else it is sub-efficient to code in C or Fortran or in any other "dinosaur" languages. The same will happen in the future when another highly efficient language comes around then it will be un-arguably be more efficient than C# simply because developers learned from mistakes.

Quote from vicirek:

I just checked out of curiosity and there is page TIOBE Programming Community Index Definition showing some stuff which I did not attempt to read. This is commercial site and the single purpose of such index could be to generate traffic and sales - nothing else. SO tags may be also not 100% scientific and dependent on many factors like number of amateur programmers, students, knowledge of English etc.

As it was pointed earlier C vs C# is not a real issue.

Microsoft is solid company and nobody is bashing them but the reality is that they change direction too often due to competition and usually recognize it after the fact. They were targeting Java hence .Net now is IPhone, Google etc, and you have Windows 8 and new programming environment with few missing dlls and other changes to programming environment. This is the reality and is dependent on commercial needs and staying competitive. Even if you wrote C# program faster then others by the time it is ready to be released it is obsolete because of new operating system or new framework. You have to understand that people may want to stay with something more neutral, proven and independent from one commercial platform.

 

[hftvol]

ok wait Misaki, with all due respect, can you please point all of us to which value you added to the core of the thread? Please just links to your posts suffice where you made a logical and cohesive point where C should be used and where it shines and why one should not use C++ instead? Care to point us to a single of your posts where you either make a clear case for or against C? I do not see any!!!

And please do not make me laugh about your accusations about my data storage comments. Everyone who has ever used DBB or HDF5 knows how hard those libraries are to work with and that their APIs are very unintuitive and clumsily designed, not to mention that they really are actually not true databases but just file formats (at least HDF5). If you show any insight and add value to a true discussion, whether high frequency data storage wise, FPGA, GPU, or anything related to trading architecture then I am happy to engage with you again but so far all you do is bicker and make qualitative points without the slightest backup.

Please go to Stackoverflow.com and tell us where people use C. That website is full of top coders from Google, SO, Microsoft, Facebook, and dozens of other top market cap IT corporations. Now tell me that counts for nothing. Because you come across as someone who cannot deal with arguments that contradict your world view.

Quote from misaki:

@vicirek:

Thanks for your words of support. It's just a pity that a thread with great potential got ruined by some dude who has too much time on his hands; writes with the punctuation and style of a teen's Facebook wall; refuses to examine his gut feeling when presented with quantitative evidence by multiple sources and persons, and tells virtual tales about his programming achievements (which by the way, are clearly subpar if you read between the lines about his data storage procedure) that we know he'd never have the guts to support by pasting a single line of code.

I'd give you the opposite advice and suggest that you save time arguing with him, as it is time-consuming to deal with a person who takes things so personally, does not have the same work priorities and opportunity costs, and is evidently prepared to sacrifice a huge fraction of his teenage daily life to reach a lose-lose conclusion.

 

[hftvol]

"I figure there is alot of common code that can be shared in dynamic libraries." ?

Really? That is why you need to realm ET to invite others to share libraries in C? Must be most other programmers do not share your enthusiasm for C if you cannot easily come across libraries written in C on the net. I could point you to dozens of trading related applications and libraries written in C++ or C#.

Was that not your point as of late? Did you not link to
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/cont...tpci/index.html yourself while blatantly ignoring Stackoverflow? Was it not you who claimed popularity of C in usage? Where are those libraries, I would be interested in particular to see trading related applications and libraries written in C.

And what else you want? You now waited 13 pages and not a single person actually shared your enthusiasm for C nor volunteered to work with you on a library collection. I tried to add value to post show cases where C is still in heavy usage but most all are niche areas. And then you started attacking me saying C# cannot handle efficient IO if memory is limited to 256mb (http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=262154&perpage=6&pagenumber=11). Not sure why anyone in 2013 would be limited to 256mb in 2013 when talking about trading systems that run on Desktop computers or servers that can be equipped with 16gb of memory or more at the cost of a printer. And when I counter argued you call me ill-informed?

Please go to

a) http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/cont...tpci/index.html

then

b) www.stackoverflow.com

and come back and tell me which user community appears more professional and informed and up-to-date. Share with us whether you are still convinced C is the currently most popular language used in code development, worldwide. Because you are the one who comes across as very short-sighted and ill informed. You can call me whatever you want, and yes I am arrogant and sometimes get personal but I think most my arguments are backed up with facts and I showed clearly I can admit I can be at times wrong (about my statement re Galaxy phone memory) something I have not seen from you despite numerous posts (with provided facts) that contradict your claims.

Quote from bln:

Anyone here who love programming in C and are developing or looking to develop trading systems, manual or automatic in it?

I figure there is alot of common code that can be shared in dynamic libraries. Common tasks like downloading index component lists, historical data, etc.

Interested to contribute to a bundle/package of of a function modules for Linux and Windows?

 

[hftvol]

Happy to inform you that I leave this politically charged thread. Programmers by nature are a very political crowd, I am not a programmer by nature and it seems some of you have a hard time to be proven wrong and really seem to find it impossible to admit someone else has a better point or backed it up better. I honestly do not see where this is all going but just to set the facts straight

a) I targeted the OP's first post and provided areas where C is still heavily used
b) I did not start a language war, it was after it got out of hand and individuals claimed everything programmers use is based on C++ hence C++ must be the best language to use (a ludicrous statement in itself). I pointed out that there are languages such as C# that are highly efficient to bring to market new products and that in most use cases perform as fast as C or C++. The remaining cases where C or C++ outperforms C# should be tackled with C or C++. I made that abundantly clear.
c) I provided hard evidence, links to websites that show clearly that saying C is the most popular language currently in use is complete and utter bollocks.

I apologize if I became personal at times, was not my intention. I believe many points that I countered with a)-c) made here are stupid but I did not mean to refer to the person itself, rather to the statements made and weak evidence provided.

And out.

 

[misaki]

You claim that you're not a programmer, then what are you in, sales and service?

Quote from hftvol:

I am not a programmer by nature

Quote from hftvol:

Please go to Stackoverflow.com and tell us where people use C. That website is full of top coders from Google, SO, Microsoft, Facebook, and dozens of other top market cap IT corporations. Now tell me that counts for nothing. Because you come across as someone who cannot deal with arguments that contradict your world view.

Because analytical thinking is clearly not your strong suit. The reason why C# has perhaps twice the tags as compared to C and C++ combined on SO can be explained by a multitude of reasons, including (1) it has been growing faster and changing more in recent years and not because it is more popular (growth =/= market share), (2) there's self-selection since there are more inexperienced programmers using C# than people using C/C++ who RTFM, and (3) there's a nearly orthogonal factor for self-selection since SO users are mostly web developers and it's more common to build web applications using the .NET stack - if you looked at TopCoder for instance, the skew would go the other way.

The most widely used language across Google, Microsoft and Facebook is C/C++. It shows even in some main products - Chromium OS is 93% C, Chrome is mostly C/C++ (72%~), Windows 7 is mostly C/C++, I have an employee who worked on the Facebook data backend and it's mostly written in C++.

 

[hftvol]

you talk of analytic abilities? Let's make couple things clear.

* What is popularity? -> "the favor of the general public or of a particular group of people:"

* Hence, it does not matter whether we talk about skilled programmers or not so skilled programmers. Or are you saying that none of the opinions here at ET count because the average skill set of a poster in terms of trading abilities is extremely low?

* Most programmers at SO are NOT web programmers. You are clearly not perusing that site otherwise you would not make such factually incorrect statements.

* Sorry but with all due respect I go to those programming related websites that have a wide enough user base as well as sites with true professional programmers present. There are uncountable publicly known and well respected programmers at SO. People who helped write core algorithms for Google, Microsoft and the likes. People who are well respected authors and absolute Gurus of various languages, including Python, C++, C, Erlang, Haskel, and many more. How does your site stack up to that? Also, you may want to check out web traffic to SO. Oh did I forget to mention its based on ASP.NET.

* Please do not throw C and C++ in one bucket, they are very different languages. The wiki pages should get you up to speed on the differences. Windows 7 and many other products are heavily based on C++ not C. Just wanna keep the facts straight.

In summary, language popularity is not what MISAKI-san thinks but which languages are perused by developers, no matter how experienced or inexperienced. But I get more and more the idea that you are too stubborn because you appear somewhat married to C or C++ and really cannot admit its shortcomings and the fact that if a C# app can perform equally fast to tackle algorithm A as code developed in C++ but if it takes half the time to get the project out the door in C# then its a no-brainer to chose C# (ignoring many other aspects, such as chosen language of remaining code base,...). You seem to not be able to see this trade off.

And for your personal records yes I do work in sales and service. I sell my own hedge fund ideas and investment approach and take the utmost care and responsibility to fulfill my fiduciary duty to my clients, which clearly falls into the category of "service". So, you are accurate about my career. And so you can sleep at night here a fact: We do use a lot of C++ code in mission critical sections of the architecture. But most everything around it is written in C# and to-date I do not know of any other platform nor database that would serve my needs better, including KDB/Kx.

And I said I am not a programmer by nature (aka training). Does not mean I am not extremely confident in my programming abilities. So confident in fact that I feel qualified to discuss most all matters pertaining to C# while having learned and programmed in C++ as well for years.

Quote from misaki:

You claim that you're not a programmer, then what are you in, sales and service?





Because analytical thinking is clearly not your strong suit. The reason why C# has perhaps twice the tags as compared to C and C++ combined on SO can be explained by a multitude of reasons, including (1) it has been growing faster and changing more in recent years and not because it is more popular (growth =/= market share), (2) there's self-selection since there are more inexperienced programmers using C# than people using C/C++ who RTFM, and (3) there's a nearly orthogonal factor for self-selection since SO users are mostly web developers and it's more common to build web applications using the .NET stack - if you looked at TopCoder for instance, the skew would go the other way.

The most widely used language across Google, Microsoft and Facebook is C/C++. It shows even in some main products - Chromium OS is 93% C, Chrome is mostly C/C++ (72%~), Windows 7 is mostly C/C++, I have an employee who worked on the Facebook data backend and it's mostly written in C++.

 

[misaki]

Quote from hftvol:

* Most programmers at SO are NOT web programmers. You are clearly not perusing that site otherwise you would not make such factually incorrect statements.

Sorry, but again, you leave everyone highly doubtful of your analytical abilities. Either that or you just like making things up. Most of the SO questions are about the LAMP stack, Java, HTML/CSS and the likes.

// May 2010
http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/3978/most-popular-stackoverflow-tags-in-may-2010

// April 9, 2013
Web - 565,441
C# - 443,313
PHP - 371,111
Java - 397,476
android - 315,775
jquery - 297,969
C++ - 191,687
python - 177,961
iphone - 170,066
ASP.NET - 164,675
HTML - 161,725
mysql - 156,900
CSS - 125,658
ruby-on-rails - 110,666
C - 91,205

Quote from hftvol:
* Please do not throw C and C++ in one bucket, they are very different languages. The wiki pages should get you up to speed on the differences. Windows 7 and many other products are heavily based on C++ not C. Just wanna keep the facts straight.

You don't know what you're talking about. Even if you want to argue about semantics like this, you would know (1) It would be more appropriate to say that Windows is most heavily based on C, not C++, (2) I did make it very explicit that these are two different languages, except the subset of C++ that is most often used in the projects cited is almost C.

Quote from hftvol:
And for your personal records yes I do work in sales and service. I sell my own hedge fund ideas and investment approach and take the utmost care and responsibility to fulfill my fiduciary duty to my clients, which clearly falls into the category of "service". So, you are accurate about my career. And so you can sleep at night here a fact: We do use a lot of C++ code in mission critical sections of the architecture.

Oh please, insert whatever claims you want, no one's going to take you seriously when you have a history of making things up. Even your very username is starting to become a distant fantasy and come across as a quioxotic fanboy given the things that you're writing.

Quote from hftvol:But most everything around it is written in C# and to-date I do not know of any other platform nor database that would serve my needs better, including KDB/Kx.

Sorry, I do know full .NET shops that I respect but you're making it more painfully obvious that you're working in some small bucket shop. I'm disgusted - I regret I ever asked you to comment on my posts and am sorry to inform you that I'm not going to spend my time reading your posts hereafter.