Quote from: BlackHatCoiner on June 15, 2023, 02:39:20 PM

(...) To put it this way: if the average practitioner wants to write a program with 256-bit integers, and acknowledges he's incapable of maintaining that in C, won't he just switch to an alternative, like Python?

Yep, I'm with you. But, it's worth thinking about where basing decisions on a criterion like that will eventually lead, no?

Adding things to C out of fear that people might otherwise abandon it for an easier language will (over time) turn the spec into a real mess...

Each decision in isolation seems justifiable, but in the limit, they'll eat C from the inside out and turn it into a language with no clear vision and no well-defined purpose.

I think it's worth reflecting on just how much can be (and has been) accomplished with C89. If you compare the "complexity" of C89 to its "expressive power" (just as an abstract exercise, don't think too deeply about defining those terms, or their units, etc.) you'll find that it hits a kind of magical sweet spot (same thing is true, and in an even more compelling way, for Forth and Lisp). The old guard really knew what they were doing, and every programmer I admire "gets" C (even if they no longer use it) in a way that most modern programmers don't (or maybe can't).

Humanity seems to agree that things should always be changing, but in my experience, this appetite for improvement presents most strongly in people that don't actually know what they're doing.

(Don't take anything I've said personally, none of my dismissive commentary is directed at you, I'm just sharing my thoughts.)