[Cryptography] Languages, languages (was Re: Swift and cryptography)

[Tom Mitchell]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <
phill at hallambaker.com> wrote:


> I find that I can code art roughly the same speed in C or C#. Except that
> is when I am spending a week adding features to C that I need like memory
> management or the like or trying to resist doing the job properly and
> working round C's lossage.
>


I am not sure about this.....   at least not from the programming language
point of view.

A language should be expressive, sufficient and minimal.
A language should be supported by well considered libraries of "solved art".
Libraries should have a considered organization....

Libraries should  not be part the language itself.  Perhaps the "Kit"
of tools in a compiler suite but not the language definition itself.

Memory management is interesting.... because there are many views
of memory and many strategies on how to manage it.   Many largish
software projects keep their own version of malloc() and friends because
all versions of malloc() do not behave or benchmark the same in the
specific context of the application.

Memory management is kernel land to some ... it is the hidden
magic in database systems...

Memory management is also shared memory communication
blocks where hardware is very much a consideration as is the
OS management of such resources.  All very application specific...

Anyhow in  my early days many kept a tape of personally collected
and known 'C' libraries.   Versions of libraries were often overlooked
as to their importance when attempting to debug or port code.
Management of libraries is a massive tangle.









-- 
  T o m    M i t c h e l l
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