Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Power operator?
Message-ID: <7130@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 19 Jan 88 14:34:29 GMT
References: <6982@brl-smoke.ARPA> <326@splut.UUCP> <327@splut.UUCP> <22773@hi.unm.edu> <4186@eagle.ukc.ac.uk>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 20

In article <4186@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> has@ukc.ac.uk (H.A.Shaw) writes:
>You should not do complex mathematical work in C, ...

I've been involved in several large "scientific" applications that
for one reason or another were written in C, including one undergoing
coding at this very moment.  There is no way that any of them would
have been feasible in Fortran, which lacks support for data structures,
dynamic memory allocation, interface specification files (headers), and
other essential features that C provides.

I used to be quite proficient in Fortran, and even did "systems
programming" in it (yes, it was painful), but I've never found a need
to revert to Fortran now that I have C to use.

>	If hack had been written in DDL or something similar, would
>net.sources.bugs have all the traffic it now does?

Hack's problems are not due to the language it is written in, but
to the fact that it was developed by amateurs.  Even a cursory
examination of its source code shows that its authors were not in
command of the language.