hal@cornell.UUCP (Hal Perkins) (03/12/84)
> Do you want a fast, powerful language like C, or do you want > a hand-holding, slow language like Pascal? May I submit that Modula-2 > or ADA might be just what you are looking for. They have type checking and > array bounds policing galore. Please do not subject the rest of us to > your unneccessary overhead. What on earth is this nonsense? There's nothing inherently inefficient about Pascal compared to C. Most compilers allow you to turn off any runtime checks, and the resulting code can be as fast as that generated by a C compiler that does an equivalent job of code generation. Now, this is personal opinion, but... I'm getting real tired of the C bigots on the net who take gratuitous pot-shots at other programming languages; who have apparently seen "revealed truth", and it's called C, and it's better than anything else because they say so. Pascal has some problems, but so does C (take a look at all the debates in net.lang.c about the true meaning of obscure C constructs). Neither one is the "ultimate" programming language. So lets stop the non- constructive putdowns of programming languages that do not subscribe to the True Religion of the Unix hackers. It's just wasting everyone's time. (If you feel moved to reply to this with constructive comments, please do so. Keep abusive remarks to yourself.) Hal Perkins UUCP: {decvax|vax135|...}!cornell!hal Cornell Computer Science ARPA: hal@cornell BITNET: hal@crnlcs
smoot@ut-sally.UUCP (Smoot Carl-Mitchell) (03/12/84)
I agree with Hal's comments about people putting down other
programming languages.
I started out in programming 16 years ago as a Fortran
hacker, migrated to Pascal during my years
as a graduate student and eventually learned C on my own.
Along the way I picked up some Cobol, Lisp, PL/1, Snobol, and
APL experience.
All the above languages have their strengths and weaknesses.
Some of the languages were invented before the field knew very
much about compiler and programming language theory and their design
reflects the level of knowledge at the time of their invention. Doubtless
our knowledge in this area will continue to mature and future languages
will be better than what we have now.
Every programmer has a "favorite" language. My favorite right now is
C and I appreciate its strengths, but I am not so blind as to ignore
it's weaknesses. I suggest that before taking potshots at other
languages that you investigate the issues involved further before
making false or misleading statements.
--
Smoot Carl-Mitchell, CS Dept. University of Texas at Austin
{seismo, ctvax, ihnp4, kpno}!ut-sally!smoot, smoot@ut-sally.{ARPA, UUCP}leiby@masscomp.UUCP (03/20/84)
> Hal Perkins: > > I'm getting real tired of the C bigots on the net who take gratuitous > pot-shots at other programming languages; who have apparently seen "revealed > truth", and it's called C, and it's better than anything else because they > say so. Quite right. Everyone knows that BLISS-11 is the One True Programming Language. -- Mike Leibensperger {decvax,tektronix,harpo}!masscomp!leiby Masscomp; One Technology Park; Westford MA 01886