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From: ron@topaz.rutgers.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Types
Message-ID: <14039@topaz.rutgers.edu>
Date: Tue, 18-Aug-87 11:06:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.14039
Posted: Tue Aug 18 11:06:09 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 20-Aug-87 01:46:48 EDT
References: <7264@brl-adm.ARPA> <734@sdchema.sdchem.UUCP> <293@osupyr.UUCP> <847@haddock.ISC.COM> <279@nuchat.UUCP> <2311@mmintl.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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> I must disagree.  The default compiler settings should cater neither to
> professionals porting code, nor to professionals doing local development,
> but to the occasional or novice programmer, who is trying to get his newly
> written, probably small, program to run.

And I must disagree with you, if we follow this discussion back to the
beginning.

The default action for the compiler should be to ACT NORMALLY.  ACTING
NORMALLY means complying with whatever standards might be there.  Making
non-standard changes the default neither helps the naive nor the professional
programmer at all.  A naive programmer new to C is probably working with
a C text that is references NORMAL C, even if he is not, you are doing
him a disservice teaching him broken C.  A naive programmer, not new to
C, but new to this compiler, would really expect the C compiler to work
like all the other ones.  A professional programmer knows what the C
standards are and codes to them, clearly identifying nonstandard and
probably nonportable constracts that he uses.

The operational rule here is the oft quoted "Principle of Least Astonishment."
For example many novice K&R readers and long term C hands were screwed by
Lattice C defaults.

-Ron