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From: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: 'C' Standards
Message-ID: <2196@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Dec-69 18:59:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: xanth.2196
Posted: Wed Dec 31 18:59:59 1969
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Aug-87 12:13:10 EDT
References: <166@qetzal.UUCP> <157@hobbes.UUCP> <875@bsu-cs.UUCP> <1219@cognos.UUCP> <25173@sun.uucp> <298@apex.UUCP> <2163@xanth.UUCP> <1112@laidbak.UUCP>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 29
Keywords: MSC,NULL segments
Summary: more evidence of "standard cruft", the disease


                               That's me!
                              v
>In article <2163@xanth.UUCP> kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>:[I just _know_ this is gonna get me flamed.  Line eater, eat this posting!]
>:
>:Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed how C is being warped, made
>:ugly and complex, because ONE microprocessor manufacturer couldn't see
>:fit to provide a flat, linear address space?  [rants on...]
>:I don't think it is a useful endeavor to labor at such length to embed
>:the hardware design mistakes of the past in the C standards of the
>:future.

Well, I just saw another example in another posting.  Pretty soon, C
is going to pass PL/1 in the ugly sweepstakes.

One manufacturer, Symbolics, commented to the standards committee that
their machine couldn't cope with setjmp() as currently defined (guess
that means they don't make a general purpose computer?), so every C
user on every machine for the rest of time gets to deal with the added
cruft of treating setjmp() as "almost" a function, and the standard
sinks under the weight of more accreted garbage.

Come on, guys, working standards are lean, clean, and don't cater to
every brain damaged misengineering that passes by.  The point of
standards is to provide a target of excellence for the hardware
designers, not a museum of abominations.

Kent, the (ever more irritable+@an22:cgeailyread