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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2025 15:32:32 +0100
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On 24/03/2025 15:07, bart wrote:
> On 24/03/2025 11:51, David Brown wrote:
>> On 23/03/2025 02:34, bart wrote:
>>
>>> It's strange: in one part of the computing world, the speed of 
>>> building software is a very big deal. All sorts of efforts are going 
>>> on to deal with it. Compilation speed for developers is always an 
>>> issue. There is a general movement away from LLVM-based backends / 
>>> because/ it is so slow.
>>>
>>> And yet in another part (namely comp.lang.c) it appears to be a total 
>>> non-issue!
>>>
>>
>> You find it strange that different parts of the computing world (or, 
>> more appropriately, software development world) have different 
>> priorities, needs and focuses for their tools?  I find it very strange 
>> that anyone would find that strange!
>>
>>
> 
> What was strange was that that one view was shared by pretty much 
> everyone in comp.lang.c.

Do you know what the people in comp.lang.c have in common?

We program in C.

Do you know /why/ people program in C?

There can be many reasons, but a very common one is that they want fast 
resulting binaries.  Most serious programmers are familiar with more 
than one language, and pretty much all other languages are higher level, 
easier, and have higher developer productivity than C - but the 
resulting binaries are almost always slower.

C programmers are typically not bothered about build times because a) 
their build times are rarely high (Scott's projects are C++), and b), 
they are willing to sacrifice high build times if it means more 
efficient run times.