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- Path: goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU!not-for-mail
- From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU (Richard A. O'Keefe)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada
- Date: 8 Feb 1996 16:07:59 +1100
- Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
- Message-ID: <4fc0ff$ipd@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>
- References: <00001a73+00002504@msn.com> <4etcmm$lpd@nova.dimensional.com> <BYERLY_J.96Feb7170158@srm9.motsat.sat.mot.com>
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- NNTP-Posting-User: ok
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-
- >> KMays@msn.com (Kenneth Mays) posted with deletions:
- >> 3. C/C++ has hundreds more vendors, trainers, support organizations,
- >> and books written about it than Ada; in fact, there is still not a
- >> single, excellent textbook about programming in Ada;
-
- Books. Sigh. It's not the QUANTITY that counts, it's the QUALITY.
-
- I taught C for a while, so I got to see a lot of C textbooks.
- There are a few that get the language right: K&RII and H&S4 and P&B.
- But those are reference manuals for the language, not textbooks about
- programming in it.
-
- The very best textbook about programming in C that I have ever seen is
- M&Q, but there was roughly one factual error per 10 pages, and I repeat
- that that's the BEST I've seen. The data structures books include one
- written by some very experienced programmers, where page 6 said they
- followed the standard but facing on page 7 was a violation, and one of
- the techniques presented _cannot_ be used in C (because there are no
- nested functions).
-
- In contrast, the WORST Ada textbook I've seen had a much lower density of
- factual errors than the BEST C textbook. And I have seen *nothing* in C
- to match Barnes 2nd edition.
-
- [Want a textbook reviewed? Get your publisher to send THE MANUSCRIPT to
- me so that I can find the mistakes before your readers do!]
-
- Perhaps the second greatest weakness of C books is that they tend to be
- very platform specific: "all the world is DOS" or "everyone uses Sun/csh".
-
- I regard the general badness of C books as a serious issue.
- By the way, the few C++ books I have studied in any detail are worse,
- although telling what is a factual error and what is an anachronism is
- admittedly much harder.
-
- >> How about popular interest among techies: comp.lang.c and
- >> comp.lang.c++ have about 20-times more articles posted daily than does
- >> comp.lang.ada.
-
- The number of articles posted doesn't indicate INTEREST but PROBLEMS.
- Articles posted to comp.lang.c can be divided into two major groups:
- cries for help and wrong answers. (That's why I stopped reading it
- and only read comp.lang.c.moderated now.)
-
- I just checked the number of comp.lang.* articles currently at my site.
-
- ada 410
- apl 55
- asm 1
- asm370 19
- awk 55
- basic 2
- c 1260
- c++ 1543
- clipper 597
- clos 11
- clu 8
- cobol 186
- dylan 50
- eiffel 101
- forth 205
- fortran 223
- functional 39
- hermes 8
- icon 9
- idl 8
- idl-pvwave 67
- java 2219
- javascript 127
- lisp 111
- logo 17
- misc 91
- ml 11
- modula2 69
- modula3 100
- mumps 55
- oberon 26
- objective-c 33
- pascal.* 749
- perl.* 999
- pl1 44
- pop 2
- postscript 205
- prograph 115
- prolog 49
- python 114
- rexx 182
- sather 9
- scheme 74
- sigplan 1
- smalltalk 311
- tcl 446
- verilog 42
- vhdl 99
- visual 1
-
- I note that java is nearly as "popular" by this criterion as C and C++ put
- together. Maybe we should all drop C and C++ in favour of Java? (That
- mightn't be a bad idea at that.) Yet there are very very few Java books.
- The number for Dylan exceeds the number for Prolog, yet I happen to know
- that vastly more Prolog systems have been shipped than Dylan ones, and
- there are no Dylan books other than the reference manual that I know of.
-
- Does the large number of postings in comp.lang.perl.* (very close behind
- C) reflect intense interest in perl, or great difficulty with it, or, more
- likely, both?
-
- Away with popularity contests! Larry Wall and Randal Schwartz won't give
- up PERL just because there are more C trash books, more C trash courses,
- and more comp.lang.* cries for help. And nobody is going to switch from
- Postscript to PERL just because there are more messages in comp.lang.perl.*!
-
- >> The FAQ for comp.lang.ada has set a new, all time low standard for
- >> censorship where it suggests kill-filling the name of an outspoken Ada
- >> critic (the instant writer); hence the Ada community is so insecure,
- >> defensive, and intellectually dishonest that they promote cutting off
- >> the tongue of the critic -- now that's a laugh riot.
-
- I'm sorry, I don't see the censorship. There is someone whose postings
- to comp.lang.ada have, for some time now, contributed nothing to my
- understanding of Ada. NOBODY IS STOPPING MR X POSTING! That would be
- censorship. All that the FAQ does is advise people not to waste their
- time reading those postings, WHICH IS THE FUNCTION OF A BOOK REVIEW.
- By your account, book review that recommends against a book is insecure,
- defensive, intellectually dishonest censorship. You must learn to
- distinguish censorship from criticism.
-
- For what it's worth, I do have a non-empty kill file, and it saves
- time and trouble. Amongst other things, if you ignore messages from
- some people, you won't be tempted to reply to them, which means you
- won't be tempted to annoy them or write actionable things about them.
-
- "Kill-files for a more peaceful net!"
-
- --
- "conventional orthography is ... a near optimal system for the
- lexical representation of English words." Chomsky & Halle, S.P.E.
- Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ok; RMIT Comp.Sci.
-