On Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:13:41 -0000, Paul Rubin
<"http://phr.cx"@nospam.invalid> wrote:
Roy Smith <r...@panix.com> writes:
C is not evil. It's a tool. Would you call a hammer evil because it's
not
very good at driving screws?
I would call a hammer evil if it were built in a way that made it
unnecessarily likely to hit your thumb.
But is that because the hammer is misdesigned, because you're holding
the nail all wrong, or because you're actually holding a screw?
C is a very good tool for doing the kind of thing it was designed
for, which is highly efficient, low-level, portable programming.
Um. It wasn't designed for portability, or if it was, it wasn't
designed for portability very well. Then again, what makes for good
portability at the level C works best at -- macroassembly -- is not
an easy question to answer given how variable your environment can
be.
The fact that C has been used to write all sorts of large-scale
applications doesn't mean that it's good at that kind of stuff. It just
means that all the alternatives suck more than it does for that kind of
stuff.
I don't think so: http://www.adaic.org/whyada/ada-vs-c/cada_art.html
I agree. I suspect that its more the case that once most
programmers have been taught how to use the hammer that is C,
all problems look like nails.
--
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeeste Herder to the Masses
--
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