Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!uhnix1!sugar!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Relationship between C and C++ Message-ID: Date: 21 Mar 90 14:45:55 GMT References: <8432@hubcap.clemson.edu> <6515@eos.UUCP> <2944@castle.ed.ac.uk> Reply-To: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 32 > What is this wonderful "power" which C is giving me, which requires > me to live with all the pitfalls? There are only two languages I know of in which you can take a moderately complex program and run it, without modification, on a wide variety of platforms. One is Fortran, with the Software Tools library. The other is C. Which would you rather use? How much of this is due to historical inertia, how much features of the language, and how much self-fulfilling prophecy isn't really relevant. When I can take a 10 year old screen-oriented program written for Version 7 UNIX and run it on an IBM-PC under MS-DOS, then take the same source and compile and run it under both System V and BSD UNIX, it's going to take more than theoretical arguments about safety to make me change. It's going to take working code. For what other language can I get compatible compilers for: UNIX IBM-PC Amiga Atari ST Macintosh RSX-11/M VAX/VMS RMX-86 The only other language system that came close was UCSD Pascal, and it's dead. -- _--_|\ `-_-' Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. . / \ 'U` \_.--._/ v