[net.unix] Unix and user friendly systems

munck@mitre-bedford.ARPA (05/29/85)

> Ada??  You gotta be kidding..
>
> There is NO programming language that can force coders to write good
> code.  Good programming is possible in C and not even as difficult as
> in many Pascal-based languages.  Ditto for bad programming. 

Read my lips.  I said

>>    In my opinion, the language that best supports writing of superbly
>> human-readable programs at no significant expense in machine 
>> efficiency is Ada.  I doubt that anyone will challenge that...

It may be possible in C, but it is both difficult and rare.  I'd be hard
put to find a significant piece of code in UNIX that I'd call a good
example of easy-to-read code.  Any nominations from the community?
              -- Bob Munck

ron@brl (Ron Natalie) (05/29/85)

And if the people who wrote UNIX had done it in Ada, it wouldn't
be any better.  Ada lends itself to the ideosyncratic programming
conventions that are one of the problems in C as well.  Get one
of the hacking OS programmers writing in Ada and he can do the
same as if he were, if he were doing it in assembly.

-Ron

rick@grkermi.UUCP (Rick Lloyd) (06/10/85)

if the people who wrote UNIX had done it in ADA
we'd still be waiting for the specification