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From: peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Book on comparison of programming languages
Message-ID: <4654@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Jun-84 06:41:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.4654
Posted: Thu Jun 28 06:41:32 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Jun-84 07:23:21 EDT
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 14

Readers of the C is/is-not a good language debate may be interested in a new
Prentice-Hall book called "Comparison and Assessment of Programming
Languages: Ada, C, Pascal" edited by Gehani and Feuer (Bell Labs).  It is
a collection of papers on the topic, seeded by a paper by the editors that
appeared in ACM Computing Surveys.  This paper was one of the salvos in
an internal Bell Labs C-vs-Pascal debate, it seems.

In particular, one article ("Type Syntax in C") strongly supports the view,
which I share, that C's syntax is unnecessarily complicated.  It is not a
question of whether it is better or worse in absolute ways, it is that the
language appears to violate the maxim that one should avoid avoidable
complexity.

p. rowley, U. Toronto