This is such a common fallacy. C exposes lower-level memory management, but to then say "oh now you have pointers you can implement anything" is a push.
If you need to implement virtual tables and function pointers, you'd use C++ - there's no need to reinvent the wheel.
Besides software engineering is about focusing on the intrinsic complexity, and using languages and tools to mitigate the incidental complexity.
Tenuous - if you are willing to implement objects yourself then you could use C sure, but I don't think that means the language "lets you use OO". It's like you could also probably implement algebraic datatypes in C using unions and structs, but would that mean "C lets you use algebraic datatypes"? I would strongly argue no.
Agreed, I think that the code itself should be readable through better names, with the comments being a bonus rather than critical to the understanding of the code.
Yes, exactly. Clang emitted IR especially has a lot of (C/C++)-specific junk. If you look past that clutter, it's not too bad.
I think the best way to learn to read IR is to look at super-minimal examples, and then you'll be able to tell which parts of larger IR files are relevant.
Regarding this post in particular, I chose to document everything in terms of the C++ API as that's the native API. You can use any of the other bindings, and just translate the syntax across to your language.
Hey, author of the post here. Do I think the C++ API is important? For most languages no. The OCaml bindings in my case were almost sufficient, but I planned to do some memory fences and other operations in my language that the OCaml bindings didn't have.
In hindsight, it's probs better to choose OCaml bindings and then link in any special instructions you need from C++ if you need to.
Hey, Author here. This post is just some of the advice I picked up along the way. What advice would you give interns and junior developers starting out in the industry?
This is all unsafe code under the hood though - the ownership type system doesn't technically allow it but to increase expressivity they do provide this split() method for programmers to use
> Also, Bolt runs on the JVM and thus has a garbage collector
No, Bolt targets LLVM IR
As for your other points, whilst there are escape hatches in Rust that do let you do it, it's not in the core ownership type system. That's what is being compared - the type systems.
The escape hatches mean you lose some of the guarantees the type system gives you - Bolt's approach still gives you the guarantees. That's the difference.
If you need to implement virtual tables and function pointers, you'd use C++ - there's no need to reinvent the wheel.
Besides software engineering is about focusing on the intrinsic complexity, and using languages and tools to mitigate the incidental complexity.