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From: bc@cyb-eng.UUCP (Bill Crews)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Uses of "short" ?
Message-ID: <697@cyb-eng.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Sep-85 15:07:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: cyb-eng.697
Posted: Tue Sep 10 15:07:55 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Sep-85 10:16:35 EDT
References: <486@houxh.UUCP> <2761@sun.uucp>
Organization: Cyb Systems, Austin, TX
Lines: 26

> There is an unfortunate tendency for C programmers to think in terms of a
> concrete machine that they're programming for, rather than an abstract
> machine - or, even better, an abstract model of the particular computation
> they're performing.  Thinking of data objects not as lumps of machine words
> but as abstractions will, I suspect, improve the quality of your code in
> general, and specifically its portability.
> 
> 	Guy Harris

This sounds great.  I agree with it to a point.  But doesn't it depend upon
what one is trying to accomplish?  Certainly those implementing communications
protocols DO care.  Kernel hackers probably care in lots of places, too,
especially those writing device drivers.

The net is that sometimes one wants to get close to the machine, and sometimes
one wants to use C as a high(er)-level language.  That's the beauty of C; it
CAN be used either way.  But it is up to the programmer.

If you really believe what you say, would you support the abolition of the
short and long data types?  Double as well?  I'd be interested.
-- 
  /  \    Bill Crews
 ( bc )   Cyb Systems, Inc
  \__/    Austin, Texas

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