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From: shebs@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley Shebs)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: RE: Re: great quote about the "C" language
Message-ID: <2293@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Dec-83 15:53:54 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.2293
Posted: Wed Dec  7 15:53:54 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Dec-83 07:47:38 EST
References: tektroni.1633, <2288@utah-cs.UUCP> ulysses.728
Lines: 26

I have to apologize for not knowing who Art Evans is.  It seems the quotes
about C were taken a little out of context...

For everyday programming, the Lisp oblist is *all* reserved words -
most Lisps have some very obscure function names;  mung those and you're
without an interpreter.  In Franz, try the global var "base" - it's
lots of fun!  BTW, I consider C library function names to be reserved
words.  Perhaps they don't fit somebody's formal definition of "reserved
word", but messin' with 'em is dangerous, and that's what counts.

Portability is easy when you restrict yourself to subsets, but full
language implementations and operating systems are a little more difficult.
PSL is implemented in itself, and it's very difficult to make things
like garbage collectors and compilers that are both portable and written
in Lisp.  I also notice a distinct dearth of portable Un*x implementations in
anything other than C.

Say, since the tide seems to have turned towards abusing C and friends,
what is the official explanation of the reason that things like C and Basic
are so much more heavily used than all the "correct" languages like
Pascal, CLU, Turing, Praxis, and the many others?  Are most programmers just
dumb?  Inertia (but Pascal is pretty old)?  Or is "Real Programmers Don't
Use Pascal" less tongue-in-cheek than it appears at first guffaw?

							stan (the l.h.!) shebs
							utah-cs!shebs