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Text File | 1996-08-05 | 4.0 KB | 83 lines

Path: newshost.lanl.gov!tanmoy
From: [e-mail] (Tanmoy Bhattacharya)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Schildt <- Advanced Books
Date: 11 Feb 1996 00:39:38 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Distribution: world
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In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of Sat, 10 Feb 96 17:09:00 -0500

In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] (DAVID MOHORN) writes:
<snip>
   M>: Oh, C'mon guy!  Aren't you being a bit tough on Schildt?

   M>The rather tedious nonsense about the void main() declaration is being
    >blown out of all proportion. First of all, Schildt uses

   M> main() {
   M> }

   M>as the declaration in 99.99% of all books I've seen. The other 1% has
    >arguements. He must have used void main() in the Annotated Standard
    >since people discuss it so much. If so (I haven't read the book),
    >it is very unusual for him.

   The only book that I know of that uses the notorious void main(void) is
   his "Teach Yourself C" book.  But he only uses this for the first half
   of the book.  This is only because he doesn't want the reader to be
   overwhelmed with all the data types and other things until he has a
   chance to explain how functions return values and pass arguments.

This argument is extremely dangerous!!! Most schools of thought hold
that unlearning is a more difficult experience than learning: If you
think that teaching something which is explicitly wrong (as opposed to
being an approximation which has validity in a certain realm) to avoid
having the reader overwhelmed is bad pedantics. As a great physicist
once said, things should be made as simple as possible, and no
simpler. If you hold other views, I invite you to rethink your views
in the light of what we know about the pervasiveness of learnt
behaviour patterns (habits) in what we do in everyday life. I would
hate to have any of my loved ones learn from a person who believes in
what you just said. In teaching, a very strong negative point can
often cloud many positive points: a lot of good researchers are
terrible teachers. And, this is assuming that the author in question
knows what is correct and portable C as opposed to what happens to
work on his computer: reading his annotated C standard (where he
presumably is _trying_ to talk about standard C) leaves very little
room for that benefit of doubt.

In any case, are you really arguing that `void main(void)' is somehow
simpler to understand that `main()'? Does the former really need you
to know less about the type system in C than the latter? No one says
that people have no right to like his book: all people express is
their opinion of this book as a bad book to learn C from. Sure, many
will point out that you can learn to program one little box (provided
you have the right compilers etc.) from his book ... what people want
to point out is that that task is completely different from learning
the language called C.

I would suggest you try to understand _what_ people are objecting
to. I would also suggest that you say something defensible instead of
claiming that a reader needs to know less to comprehend `void
main(void)' that `main()'.

Nothing above should be construed to mean that I support `main()'. I
believe that one ought to teach people `int main(void)' from day one:
but I am willing to admit that `main()' is an alternative pedagogical
possibility.

Cheers
Tanmoy--
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