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From: jf@threel.co.uk (John Fisher)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: File handling in Fortran 77
Message-ID: <26e23059@ThreeL.co.uk>
Date: 3 Sep 90 10:28:41 GMT
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In article <1990Aug30.132335.20164@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu
(Doug McDonald) writes:
 
> I meant that a computer that can't run C is a joke.

I get really worried about remarks like this.   People just come popping
along, ignorant of the whole history of computing and of everything outside
their C/UNIX ghetto;  ignorant too, of developments like functional languages
and of the whole realm of what computers are actually *used*for*, and make
remarks like this, and everybody laughs and says how very iconoclastic and
progressive it is.

The trouble is, it's evidence of a closed, rigid and dogmatic frame of
mind.   And in twenty or thirty years, when these folk are in charge of
the whole computer industry, anybody who comes along with a new idea is
going to have a hard time of it.

No, a computer that can't run C is not necessarily a joke, any more than a
kitchen appliance that can't whisk eggs is a joke.   A computer is either
good or bad at the job is was designed to do.   That's all.   There are no
transcendentally determined criteria for what makes a good computer. 

--John