Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!rutgers!cmcl2!brl-adm!adm!V4039%TEMPLEVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
From: V4039%TEMPLEVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Stan Horwitz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Modern langauges
Message-ID: <11072@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: 2 Jan 88 06:05:27 GMT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
Lines: 22


  Regarding the critisms of C recently posted, as a new C programmer, just
as a hobby ... not work related, I find the whole language very strange
but intriguing.  It does offer the imagitive programmer lots of control
not easily available in higher level languages.  It's syntax is strange
but that can be fixed to some extent by simply creating a file with
#DEFINE statements defining thins in easier terms.  I was tempted to
set up just such a file of definitions with the goal of making the syntax
appear similar to that of Pascal which I know very well, but this is not
something one does when learning a language.  Some of the symbols used
for operations are insane.  If more care were used by C's authors in
selecting symbols to use, it would have made it a little more difficult
to make stupid errors.
   I have one question though.  The whole concept of C is in my opinion
innovative in that the authors have developed a very powerful higher level
assembly language.  It gives all the power of assembly language plus much
more without sacrificing too much in the way of efficiency of object code.
The question is, given the imagination of C's authors why couldn't they
think of a better name to call the language?  Where the heck did the
name come from?  Was the name C the result of a night of heavy drinking
or what?  Not that it really matters, but I am just curious?

   Happy New Year ... Stan Horwitz  V4039 at TEMPLEVM