25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

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nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,080
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/25-years-later-interview-linus-torvalds
As to C, nothing better has come around. We've updated the kernel sources for new and improved features (the C language itself has changed during the years we've been doing this), and we've added various extensions on top of C for extra type-checking and runtime verification and hardening, etc., but on the whole, the language is recognizably the same except for small details.

And honestly, it doesn't look likely to change. The kind of languages people see under active development aren't for low-level system programming. They are to make it easier to create user applications with fancy UIs, etc. They explicitly don't want to do things a kernel needs, like low-level manual memory management.
...
Bob: This issue of Linux Journal focuses on Kids and Linux. Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer science students?

Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I came from at all.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
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