sommar@enea.UUCP (Erland Sommarskog) (12/28/87)
I know, I know this does not belong the least in comp.os.vms/INFO-VAX but I just couldn't keep quiet any more. I have cross-posted it to comp.lang.misc and will probably get damned for that I did. I have directed follow-ups there as well. ARPA and BITnet people who must flame me: Please mail be persoanlly. To comp.lang.misc people: You haven't missed anything important. It's just the same my-language-is-better-than-yours quarrel. J_ELORAN@FINJYU.BITNET writes: > (talking about C...) So why would we use 'formula translator for an > operating system?' Because some people have learned it and are NOT > bothering to learn new programming languages. I was part of this > 'old programming languages' category, until I got thrilled enough > (inspired by other C programmers) to learn C. After I learned C, > I began to understand what the REAL difference between the 'old' > and the 'new' programming languages were. And it also affected to my view > of the operating systems (along the study of them). > > Long live C! But C is no new language. Well, may be a little younger than Fortran and Cobol, but not much. And they are all archaic. There are plenty of motivation for the former two to continue living, namely tons of programs written in them. And with the current vogues and trends, the same motives will keep C alive too long. There *are* motives for using C, I shall not deny that, but they have nothing to do with the qualities of the language itself. It's just happens to be that C is wide-spread and available on many machines, particulary this is due to one of today's most poupular operating systems (which, by the way, has an archaic user interface). Note the difference VMS/ Unix here. In VMS you can do system programming in virutually any language, you don't have to stick to Bliss, whereas Unix more or less forces you to use C. Why I find C archaic? Let me just say I think that a good language should save you many mistakes as early as possible. It should also be readable, i.e. it shouldn't unnecessarily use artificiasl symbols. Modern languages, but still in the 3rd generation, are for example Ada, Modula-2 and Eiffel. (The latter language, or rather the only current implementataion of it, demonstrates a perfect use of C. The Eiffel system runs on Unix and produces C code as output. That is C; a portable assembler, not a modern high-level language.) -- Erland Sommarskog ENEA Data, Stockholm sommar@enea.UUCP C, it's a 3rd class language, you can tell by the name.