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From: John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: naughty Pascal
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2026 08:33:46 -0800
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On Thu, 8 Jan 2026 07:00:14 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D=E2=80=99Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> > Is that why people wrote programs bottom-up (i.e. with the main
> > function at the bottom to avoid forward references)? =20
>=20
> C is also like that. And C++, for all its enormous complexity in other
> areas, preserves the tradition.

C had forward declarations from early on, but they were somewhat janky
in K&R; by the time ANSI C was finalized they had full, proper forward
declarations, though the old-style (declare the function and its return
type, but not the parameters) were still allowed for legacy reasons.

Even now there's a certain temptation to write small programs that way;
more modern programmers' editors make it easier to navigate through a
large source file, and it's easier to compile a one-filer than to set
up and maintain a makefile. Doesn't scale well, though.