Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ukma!gatech!mcnc!decvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!nuchat!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Modern langauges
Summary: Frothing at the mouth in this one. Keep your finger N-ready.
Message-ID: <1374@sugar.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jan 88 13:08:30 GMT
References: <11072@brl-adm.ARPA>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 49

In article ... V4039%TEMPLEVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Stan Horwitz) writes:
>   Regarding the critisms of C recently posted, as a new C programmer...
>                                              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.

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!

Sorry. This is one of the first things a beginning 'C' programmer seems to
want to do. I don't know why I never had the urge (especially since I was
a Pascal fanatic before I was introduced to 'C'), maybe it's a character
flaw... BUT...

This is the greatest way in the world to creat totally unreadable and
unmaintainable code.

	1. No two people use the same set of #defines. You look at a
	   piece of code that's been pascalised, and you have no idea
	   whether it's even syntactically correct.

	2. It keeps you from really learning 'C'. So long as you think of 'C'
	   as just Pascal with a weird character set, you'll have no end
	   of problems with the language. Making it look like Pascal is
	   going to extend this learning period indefinitely.

	3. It makes debugging much harder, because the compiler will be giving
	   you error messages that have little relation to the source code.

> 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.

My god, sanity prevails. Thank you. Now I know I won't be getting any
pascalised 'C' from you in comp.sources.

> Some of the symbols used
> for operations are insane.

Do you mean clinically insane, or just unusual?

> 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?

C's predecessor was a language called B.
-- 
-- Peter da Silva  `-_-'  ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter
-- Disclaimer: These U aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.