Path: csiph.com!news.swapon.de!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tim Rentsch Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Top 10 most common hard skills listed on resumes... Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2024 06:57:25 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 48 Message-ID: <86sety9yd6.fsf@linuxsc.com> References: <875xrkxlgo.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <87o75bwlp8.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <871q27weeh.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <20240829083200.195@kylheku.com> <87v7zjuyd8.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <20240829084851.962@kylheku.com> <87mskvuxe9.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <875xrivrg0.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <20240829191404.887@kylheku.com> <86cylqw2f8.fsf@linuxsc.com> <871q2568vl.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com> <87cylo494u.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com> <20240831195350.785@kylheku.com> <86mskrrvco.fsf@linuxsc.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2024 15:57:29 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="5475264e673852879913d2eef8867355"; logging-data="3727600"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX190vzlIaceqPxTORGCdGXnCbboFxr+3G98=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.4 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:tNL5GEafs9oPr6LVQh5nDOzrabI= sha1:Smb2waPpEzDcsfPiBe12bO7n0U4= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:388427 Janis Papanagnou writes: > On 01.09.2024 22:07, Tim Rentsch wrote: > >> [...] The most important purpose of >> the ISO C standard is to be read and understood by ordinary C >> developers, not just compiler writers. [...] > > Is that part of a preamble or rationale given in the C standard? > > That target audience would surely surprise me. Myself I've > programmed in quite some programming languages and never read a > standard document of the respective language, nor did I yet met > any programmer who have done so. All programmer folks I know used > text books to learn and look up things and specific documentation > that comes with the compiler or interpreter products. (This is of > course just a personal experience.) > > I've also worked a lot with standards documents in various areas > (mainly ISO and ITU-T standards but also some others). [..] My comment is only about the C standard, not any other standards documents. > That's why I immediately see the necessity that compiler creators > need to know them in detail to _implement_ "C". And that's why I > cannot see how the statement of the C-standard's "most important > purpose" would sound reasonable (to me). You're hearing something different than what I said. The C standard is not a tutorial, and I didn't say it is. Of course the standard is important to implementors, and I didn't say it isn't. It's a safe bet that most C developers are not familiar with the C standard and I didn't say they were. Despite all that, the most important value of the C standard is that is available to, accessible to, and can be read by, ordinary developers. To see why that is, compare the C standard to reference documents for other current programming languages. It is fairly easy to get a solid sense of exactly what the C language allows and what it doesn't ("solid" being the key word here). That is not the case for many popular languages today. > I mean, what will a programmer get from the "C" standard that a > well written text book doesn't provide? The text books being imagined here don't exist, because there is no market for them. Very few developers read the C standard. But the impact and influence of those who do is much larger than the small numbers would suggest.