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Comment by sebcat | Hacker News Reader

Or just rewrite it in modern C. This is sane and doable in a short period of time. You just have to make sure it's modern C.

(no true Scotsman)

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> Or just rewrite it in modern C. This is sane and doable in a short period of time.

What do you call modern C?

I think his comment was facetious. I think the clue is "no true scotsman," which is a type of fallacy. I think the point is that it's assumed to be better because of the use of "modern," and that it's only valuable if it's rewritten in something modern. Perhaps it's a joke about how old code is actually fine, and that people who get excited about the cutting-edge technology could chill a little bit. Maybe it's just a mockery of the previous arguments.

No true Scotsman:

"We found a terrifying vulnerability in your codebase. You should rewrite it in modern C++."

"OK, done!"

"We found a terrifying vulnerability in your codebase. It must not have been modern C++!"

Isn't Go pretty much the modern C, with additions in concurrency?

No, not really. Go left a lot of C behind (pointer arithmetic for example), while also being garbage collected and having modules instead of header files. Coincidentally, while being touted as replacement for C and as the "language of the server", most of its converts come from python, ruby, and node.js evironments.

It's garbage collected. So, no.

Perhaps he means C11? The most recent standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C11_(C_standard_revision)

same question applies to C++. every new version of C++ is the modern version for a while…

Well, anything that does not support the point I am making is not modern C.

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