Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!adobe!steel!burgett
From: burgett@steel.COM (Michael Burgett)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Third public review of X3J11 C
Summary: who said C is supposed to be a mathmatical language?
Message-ID: <4203@adobe.COM>
Date: 26 Aug 88 15:42:35 GMT
References: <8365@smoke.ARPA> <225800053@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <8374@smoke.ARPA> <509@accelerator.eng.ohio-state.edu> <891@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@adobe.COM
Reply-To: burgett@steel.UUCP (Michael Burgett)
Organization: Who?? Me?????
Lines: 28

These discussions about the flaws of the C language in dealing with complex
floating point ops, and the *failure* of X3J11 to solicit input and rectify
these things are getting _old_....

1) C is not now, has not been in the past, and (hopefully) will not be in
the future, a lanugage designed for writing scientific applications

2) C was designed and implemented to remove the onus of using assembly language
to write operating systems, utilities, device drivers and the ilk.  In this
regard, it has no equal.

In light of 1 & 2... where's the beef?  C is doing what it is designed to do,
and from what I've seen of the ANSI standard, will continue to do so.  My hat
off to the committee for not bowing to public pressure to try to make C all
things to all people (can you say PL/1... I knew you could.)

If you want to write an application demanding scientific functions, write the 
damn things in fortran and then write all the stuff that makes sense to, in C.
(How would you like it if you hired a carpenter and he showed up with one tool
to try and add a room on your house?)  This seems to me the essence of why we 
have different languages to begin with, and all the whining, sniveling and 
crying *shouldn't* change that... just face it, to program effectively
you just might have to learn more than one language.... (shock! disbelief!!)

awww well.....  i guess i've flamed enuff for one letter....

	mike burgett		burgett!adobe@decwrl.dec.com

"my intellectual work belongs to my employer, but my flames are my own..."