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From: g-frank@gumby.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: pascal as a *anything* programming language
Message-ID: <258@gumby.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 26-Jan-85 17:34:01 EST
Article-I.D.: gumby.258
Posted: Sat Jan 26 17:34:01 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Jan-85 06:39:30 EST
References: <252@gumby.UUCP> <535@ukma.UUCP>
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 40

> >> /*
> >> 
> >> to paraphrase lyrics from sugar magnolia (grateful dead)
> >> 
> >> C's got everything delightful
> >> C's got everything i need
> >> 
> >> */
> >
> >The more things change, the more they are the same.  Try to convince a
> >dedicated FORTRAN hacker that it's time to move up to a (gasp!) structured
> >language like C, and see what kind of answer you get . . .
> 
> Hey!  In the context of this net (most everybody) is of the class
> of programmer which says 
> 
> 	"C's got everything delightful
> 	 C's got everything i need".  

  I don't understand.  Are you trying to say that if lots of people hold an
opinion, it must be right?  Or are you telling me that this is a net full of
silly people?  Am I to attach semantic value to the exclamation, "Hey!"?

  My point was just that when C, and languages like it, were introduced, they
were on the leading edge of language design, and most people who had grown
up with FORTRAN or BASIC said, "Why should I change?  I know this language
I've been using for all these years, and I can't imagine anything I can't
do in it.  It's got everything I need - go away."  Now C has reached its
maturity (senescence?), other languages are at the leading edge, and the
folks who've used C all these years are defending it in exactly the same
way all those FORTRAN types did their favorite in the 70's.

  Progress for its own sake is not a good.  Progress for the sake of solving
known problems and opening up ways of formulating and solving new ones, is.


-- 
      Dan Frank

	"good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance."