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From: mauney@ncsu.UUCP (Jon Mauney)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Selecting a Prog-Lang: Support for C
Message-ID: <2590@ncsu.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-May-84 09:44:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: ncsu.2590
Posted: Wed May 16 09:44:07 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 17-May-84 04:18:59 EDT
References: <132@ihnet.UUCP>
Organization: N.C. State University, Raleigh
Lines: 32

I cannot let the discussion of programming languages (Pascal, Ada, C,
Cobol, Fortran) go by without challenge.  In general I find the 
arguments poorly thought out,  but in particular I object to these
two statements:

>	PASCAL and ADA, with their strong-typing, can cause complexity
>	to increase (e.g. dynamic-memory allocation).

>	C is specified by a grammar,
>	which can GREATLY ease the construction of sophisticated language-
>	processing tools; it also improves the performance of the compiler

These statements are so patently absurd that I don't know what to say.
Instead of adding my own prejudices to the discussion, let me recommend
that everyone read the book 
     "Comparing and Assessing Programming Languages -- Ada, C, Pascal"
     edited by Feuer and Gehani, published by Prentice-Hall.
The book reprints papers on the subject by all the greats, Wirth, Ritchie,
Kernighan, Habermann, Shaw, Wulf.  

It is perfectly alright to like or dislike a programming language,
but if you are going to give reasons,  you should know whereof you
speak.  Feuer and Gehani is a good place to start.

     (And those of you who think Pascal is not portable might be interested
     to know that the users of my parser generators, like the owners of
     Remington Micro-screen shavers, almost never complain.)

-- 

_Doctor_                           Jon Mauney,    mcnc!ncsu!mauney
\__Mu__/                           North Carolina State University