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From: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Portable C vs Efficient C or \"Cost of Portability\"
Message-ID: <1294@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Apr-87 15:07:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.1294
Posted: Tue Apr 28 15:07:50 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 1-May-87 01:01:09 EDT
References: <7134@brl-adm.ARPA>
Reply-To: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis)
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science
Lines: 35

In article <7134@brl-adm.ARPA> jfjr@mitre-bedford.arpa writes:
>... If you are involved in a project of significant size (upwards of
>20k lines) and more than two programmers who are office mates
>related and very good friends I wouldn't touch C with a ten
>foot pole. For such things the type checking and abstractions
>supplied by Pascal or even better are absolutely necessary.

As one of the contributors to this discussion, I should clarify that
I am of course talking about "typed C", i.e., coding practices which
satisfy even extremely fussy compilers (of which pcc is not one). Such
things as required function prototypes (oh, I wish I had a compiler which
implemented them...), fussy pointer checking, etc., are of course essential
for any real project.

In my naivete, I didn't point out that distinction. The real mileage you
get in high-level languages isn't the 10:1 source code reduction (though 
that is of course significant) but the fact that good compilers flag nonsense
rather than letting it through (on the basis that the programmer *knows* 
that this construct generates a Reverse Backscratch on the Whizzbang 4176).

Of course, one could denigrate such fussy compilers on the basis that they
allow sloppy people to move from burger-flopping to programming. However,
fussy compilers don't enforce good design (this I know: I'm in the process
of marking a stack of term projects written in Modula-2), and that is what 
separates the good programmers from the bad ones.

-----
Vincent Manis                {seismo,uw-beaver}!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!manis
Dept. of Computer Science    manis@cs.ubc.cdn
Univ. of British Columbia    manis%ubc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa  
Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1W5      manis@ubc.csnet
(604) 228-6770 or 228-3061

"Long live the ideals of Marxism-Lennonism! May the thoughts of Groucho
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