From APOD:
Upon inspection and contemplation, a leading hypothesis for its cause has now emerged. In sum, this hypothesis holds that a lightning discharge in a thundercloud can temporarily change the electric field above the cloud where charged ice crystals were reflecting sunlight. The new electric field quickly re-orients the geometric crystals to a new orientation that reflects sunlight differently.
In other words, a lightning discharge can cause a sundog to jump. Soon, the old electric field may be restored, causing the ice crystals to return to their original orientation.

TL;DR: It was aliens.

A lot of the features people seem to think would improve C are the features that would completely defeat the purpose of the language. Adding object-oriented features would add overhead (and OO features can be imitated through coding techniques anyway). Adding exception handling adds HUGE overhead. Adding garbage collection, like Java? Ridiculous amount of overhead. Methods for catching dangling references: more overhead. Pretty much anything you do add is going to degrade the language for its specific purpose.

Now if you can afford to handle some of that overhead, you have C++ as an alternative, which was made to introduce some of those extra features, yet still maintain its speed. And this is what many projects do. The Linux kernel needs to be as fast and efficient as possible, and so it uses C. On the other hand, there are desktop environments like KDE that use C++ instead to take advantage of those extra features and aren't as concerned with raw speed considering the environment they run in. And this continues all the way up to higher level languages.

As for insecurities and bugs, there is no reason to blame the language. Even in the hands of a good programmer, any language is a liability. Java is the perfect example, due to its enormous adoption in the early 2000s. There are TONS of Java programs out there that are insecure, buggy, and error-prone, and yet one of the goals of the language was to minimize this. Is it easier to make these mistakes in C? Of course! But it's nonetheless a necessity in the programming world.

Just take a look at the Linux kernel. It's written ENTIRELY in C, and yet it's certainly more stable and secure than the Windows kernel, which is a combination of C and C++. (And go ahead and suggest to Linus Torvalds that it should be switched to C++ or some other "more modern" language. He'll give you a nice 10 page essay on why you're wrong.)

Oh, to add to that, most of the drivers written for your computer are written in C.

The point is that C is most definitely NOT past its prime, and in fact due to the embedded systems industry, it's getting a resurgence.

In reply to this comment by xxovercastxx:
I'm curious what the go-to languages are these days, in your opinion. I have a programming background (high school and the local community college) but have spent the last 15 years in networking and servers. I've done some scripting in Perl and really enjoyed it. I've got Python on my todo list. What else do you think might be worth a look?

>> ^ChaosEngine:

Honestly, outside of embedded programming, if you sit down and start writing new code in C these days, you need your head examined.


I guess it depends on what you want to create. For windows apps, it's hard to go past C# for front or back end. For web based stuff, Ruby or php. Python is really useful and if you want something to really change the way you look at programming, Haskell or LISP. Java is still quite popular, but I personally never warmed to it.

And then, of course there's objective-c for iOS.

>> ^schlub:

You also have to consider that many, many newer languages have their roots in C. And many share the same (or similar) syntax since C is used as their model (C++, Java, Javascript, C#, Perl, D, etc...). But, I definitely disagree that C is past its prime. It is still used everywhere, not just embedded programming. It's used for drivers, OS kernels, windows apps, shell apps, compilers, interpreters, windowed desktop managers, etc, etc, etc... It's not great for RAD though, that's for sure!
C rullz!!


Yes, it's still used everywhere. No, that's not a good thing. 99% of the time you read about some security vulnerability being patched, there'll be a C buffer overrun there.

Is it still a useful tool? Absolutely. When you get down to the really low level stuff, it's everywhere and the reason it's everywhere is because it's so trivial to write a compiler for. But for the majority of people, there's simply no reason to use it and yet many still do, hence we have security issues, applications that leak memory and painters algorithms everywhere.

Writing a program in C is like preparing a meal with fugu. In the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, you can have a great meal, but get it wrong and you poison your guests.

You also have to consider that many, many newer languages have their roots in C. And many share the same (or similar) syntax since C is used as their model (C++, Java, Javascript, C#, Perl, D, etc...). But, I definitely disagree that C is past its prime. It is still used everywhere, not just embedded programming. It's used for drivers, OS kernels, windows apps, shell apps, compilers, interpreters, windowed desktop managers, etc, etc, etc... It's not great for RAD though, that's for sure!

C rullz!!

Why thank you! You as well! May the Java be with you!!!

In reply to this comment by eric3579:
Happy National Coffee Day!!!
Have A Great Caffeine Filled Day!!!

Looks like it really is just you, sorry to say. The way you described it, it sounds like it's just the CSS that your browser is ignoring.

One thought is maybe you accidentally changed your browser to use No Style instead of Basic Page Style under View < Page Style.



In reply to this comment by JiggaJonson:
Like i said I did turn off my ad blockers and even disabled all of my addons after the install. idk what the deal is but for now im dealing with ads and using chrome. If you're not having any problems, and no one else i know is it must just be me but idk what the deal is. I havnt installed anything new. hmmm *scratches head*

In reply to this comment by lucky760:
Have you tried disabling any ad blocking software you might have running? Do you have javascript disabled?

Can you install Firebug and see if it's reporting any errors?

Can you take a screenshot so I can see what you're seeing? Sounds like an issue on your computer. I've been using the site on several computers (and phones) today and haven't had any issues. When did your problems start?

In reply to this comment by JiggaJonson:
I'm having a lot of problems surfing the site with Firefox specifically. I turned off all addons and reinstalled and still they persist.

Problems include:
Lack of formating (everything right aligned and not layed out on page and no background just white)
Unable to see comments - When i click on comments it takes me to comment box but i still cant see them.
Sift lounge not working.

I also reinstalled Flash and Java just incase that was the issue. But if i switch browsers (on Chrome now but I also tried on IE) everything is fine.

Just heads up, idk what the deal is.

Like i said I did turn off my ad blockers and even disabled all of my addons after the install. idk what the deal is but for now im dealing with ads and using chrome. If you're not having any problems, and no one else i know is it must just be me but idk what the deal is. I havnt installed anything new. hmmm *scratches head*

In reply to this comment by lucky760:
Have you tried disabling any ad blocking software you might have running? Do you have javascript disabled?

Can you install Firebug and see if it's reporting any errors?

Can you take a screenshot so I can see what you're seeing? Sounds like an issue on your computer. I've been using the site on several computers (and phones) today and haven't had any issues. When did your problems start?

In reply to this comment by JiggaJonson:
I'm having a lot of problems surfing the site with Firefox specifically. I turned off all addons and reinstalled and still they persist.

Problems include:
Lack of formating (everything right aligned and not layed out on page and no background just white)
Unable to see comments - When i click on comments it takes me to comment box but i still cant see them.
Sift lounge not working.

I also reinstalled Flash and Java just incase that was the issue. But if i switch browsers (on Chrome now but I also tried on IE) everything is fine.

Just heads up, idk what the deal is.

Have you tried disabling any ad blocking software you might have running? Do you have javascript disabled?

Can you install Firebug and see if it's reporting any errors?

Can you take a screenshot so I can see what you're seeing? Sounds like an issue on your computer. I've been using the site on several computers (and phones) today and haven't had any issues. When did your problems start?

In reply to this comment by JiggaJonson:
I'm having a lot of problems surfing the site with Firefox specifically. I turned off all addons and reinstalled and still they persist.

Problems include:
Lack of formating (everything right aligned and not layed out on page and no background just white)
Unable to see comments - When i click on comments it takes me to comment box but i still cant see them.
Sift lounge not working.

I also reinstalled Flash and Java just incase that was the issue. But if i switch browsers (on Chrome now but I also tried on IE) everything is fine.

Just heads up, idk what the deal is.

I'm having a lot of problems surfing the site with Firefox specifically. I turned off all addons and reinstalled and still they persist.

Problems include:
Lack of formating (everything right aligned and not layed out on page and no background just white)
Unable to see comments - When i click on comments it takes me to comment box but i still cant see them.
Sift lounge not working.

I also reinstalled Flash and Java just incase that was the issue. But if i switch browsers (on Chrome now but I also tried on IE) everything is fine.

Just heads up, idk what the deal is.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Awesome! Please make this, but please make in something else besides java so my Mac doesn't China Syndrome on me.

*promote.

3 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

stupid java!

>> ^eric3579:

So i'm computer stupid. Could you fill me in about scripts?
>> ^Crosswords:
I use Firefox with no-script, that occasionally causes problems with playing videos. In use IE on rare occasions, mostly when I have a problem viewing a page with Firefox. If I cant get a page to load properly with IE or FireFox they're doing something wrong.
Biggest problem I run into with no-script is it seems some sites are starting to tie everything into the content you want to actually see, so you end up having to enable just about everything to see a video.



No-script is an addon that basically blocks java and flash programs which are potential sources of viruses and malware.

>> ^BoneRemake:

We need a clock on the front page to say what time standing videosift is operating at and what day it is.
I can program a basic java one if you give me the keys to the car.


You can have this car with its key for free: http://www.donatingacartoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/junk-car-donation.jpg