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- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.c,comp.object,comp.software-eng
- Path: assip.csasyd!news
- From: donh@syd.csa.com.au (Don Harrison)
- Subject: Re: Portability of code & skills (Beware of "C" Hackers etc)
- Message-ID: <DoI5Ao.AyJ@assip.csasyd.oz>
- Sender: news@assip.csasyd.oz
- Reply-To: donh@syd.csa.com.au
- Organization: CSC Australia
- References: <4ikb6kINN1is@mayne.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca>
- Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 06:42:23 GMT
-
- Kazimir Kylheku writes:
-
- :In article <DoG3HE.48E@assip.csasyd.oz>,
- :Don Harrison <donh@syd.csa.com.au> wrote:
- : >Graham Perkins writes:
-
- [...]
-
- : >... So if you want your new language to be a success,
- : >:then give it away for ten years, preferably with a free O.S. and all source
- : >:code as well. It's difficult to see many other reasons for widespread
- : >:adoption of C and Unix.
- : >
- : >Aside from the historical argument, could another reason be that people
- : >love power and permissive languages such as C give such power? The trouble
- : >is, of course, that most people don't handle power responsibly because we
- : >are selfish by nature. Our short-sighted selfishness is manifested in
- : >programming as hacking.
- :
- :What does selfishness have to do with anything? It's just a matter of using
- :undefined and implementation defined behavior. The problem is laziness to learn
- :the language properly.
-
- I'm thinking of those who hack because they expect they won't be around to
- maintain their handiwork. It is selfishness because they don't care about the
- person maintaining it. Call it laziness, if you prefer.
-
- Those who hack knowing they are the maintainer are just fools.
-
- :The C language is not as permissive as you may think: it just leaves it up to
- :the implementations to give meaning to many operations, while it perfectly
- :defines others.
- :
- :Programmers who are not aware of these pitfalls end up hacking out code that
- :is not portable.
- :
- :Another thing is that C compilers don't provide enough run-time checking,
- :because the standard doesn't require them to, but that's another issue
- :altogether from permissiveness inherent to the language.
-
- Well, dynamic permissiveness is still a characteristic of the language. Can't
- comment on static permissiveness wrt C.
-
- Don.
-
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