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From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Compatibility with EBCDIC
Message-ID: <1019@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Aug-87 02:35:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: bsu-cs.1019
Posted: Fri Aug 21 02:35:41 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Aug-87 01:38:30 EDT
References: <855@tjalk.cs.vu.nl> <2683@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 22
Summary: Yeah, but that's not what the survey says!

I asked, among other things:
>>Must every language accomodate every whim and fancy of every badly-designed
>>architecture?

Lawrence Crowl responds with a lot of sarcasm that's worth ignoring,
but one cliche'd misconception deserves response:

>I assume this applies to character sets also.  Since you are talking about
>EBCDIC, are you implying the 360 architecture was badly designed.  This claim
>will need VERY good arguments to over-ride 25 years (almost) of success.

The misconception here is that a broad user base implies high quality
or elegance of design.

Instead of offering VERY good arguments, I will simply offer three
counterexamples without further comment.

1.   The 8086 family of CPUs versus the 680x0 family of CPUs
2.   The National Enquirer versus the Wall Street Journal
3.   Family Feud versus the MacNeil/Lehrer Report
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo}!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi