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From: alex@sdcsvax.UUCP (Alex Pournelle)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Re: Modula-2, exceptions, C
Message-ID: <918@sdcsvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Jun-84 13:39:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.918
Posted: Fri Jun 22 13:39:16 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 27-Jun-84 19:40:40 EDT
References: <1986@mit-eddi.UUCP>, <11800018@iuvax.UUCP>
Organization: Alex Pournelle @ UC San Diego; freelance writer
Lines: 36

{ I guess this is the symbol for a Japanese smiley face:  ;-) }

M2 does indeed provide exception-handling, at least in real
implementations.  Rather than Ada's hide-bound "this is the way you will
handle them, unless you stick in a statement to pass the buck" exception
declaration, M2's allows them to be passed in at run-time (heavens!
Shades of LISP!).

C may be flexible, but it's also incomplete: no modules, little data
hiding (except with the primitive "across file boundaries" method), no
nesting, and an infuriating VAR parameter passing method.  Not to
mention that PROCS are an add-on (using the void type), there is no
initialization section (hand-in-hand with modules), and loony-bin
syntax.

Sure, you can cure the rather baroque syntax oddities with #DEFINEs, but
then no one will be able to read your code ("Hey, mac, what are all
these BEGINs and ENDs doing in your C program!").

C is also very hard to learn as a first (or even seventh!) language.
Its syntax and I/O lead to hair-tearing bugs that can take hours to find:
e.g., leaving out the word "case" in front of the cases of a switch();
leaving the file parameter out of an fprint(); the crazy dichotomy between
zero- and one-based arrays (in the same language, mind you!).
More examples on request.

Here's a question that the lions of net.lang can tear into: will we see
a coming-together of "traditional" Pascaloid languages with the more
"experimental" LISPoids?  We've seen some of this
already; what with the tremendous inertia of FOOBOL and COTRAN, we're
unlikely to see wholesale change within a year, are we?

Alex

Vituperation will be cheerfully laughed at, then sent to the TwiByte Zone.
Constructive comments will be saved.