Fil-C for programmers

Posted Oct 28, 2025 17:54 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
Parent article: Fil-C: A memory-safe C implementation

I'm interested in adoption of Fil-C by C and C++ programmers because for some years my assumption has been that most remaining C programmers in particular want DWIM and so they won't be any happier in Fil-C than in say (safe) Rust since these languages both lack the unconstrained Undefined Behaviour where DWIM thrives, if you write nonsense in Fil-C your program doesn't work and it's your fault which presumably was not what you meant. So widespread enthusiasm for Fil-C from C programmers would indicate that I was completely wrong, which would be a pleasant surprise.

For users in a bunch of cases this is a no brainer, Daroc gave their shell as an example but I'm sure most of us run many programs every day where raw perf just isn't a big deal. I am interested in programmers rather than users because I think that influences whether Fil-C is just an interesting project for our moment or it becomes a "successor" to C in a way that Zig, Odin etc. never could.

Fil-C for programmers

Posted Oct 28, 2025 18:15 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

> I am interested in programmers rather than users because I think that influences whether Fil-C is just an interesting project for our moment or it becomes a "successor" to C in a way that Zig, Odin etc. never could.

My expectation is that there isn't going to be a single successor to C. For some group of people, that was C++ a long time back. For others it is going to Rust or Zig or something else. For the final group they are going to keep coding in C forever and it will more of a generational change eventually.

Fil-C for programmers

Posted Oct 28, 2025 18:32 UTC (Tue) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link]

I think the point of Fil-C, as a C implementation, is precisely to support the people and projects that are just going to keep using C — in a way that still lets users avoid memory safety issues if they so choose.

Fil-C for programmers

Posted Oct 28, 2025 18:34 UTC (Tue) by rweikusat2 (subscriber, #117920) [Link] (1 responses)

If this is just another C implementation, it's distribution packagers who would need to adopt it and possibly other people who routinely compile but not necessarily write code.

Fil-C for programmers

Posted Oct 29, 2025 1:35 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Fair point. Reducing friction to adoption could work if the performance impact is universally close enough.