Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Ian Collins Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Preprocessor Overheads Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2017 08:05:19 +1300 Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: <87wpd6hgkr.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <87r33egqcz.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <87d1eygjk7.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <871svdhq12.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <618f97e1-a131-46f7-bf07-7275b40e0871@googlegroups.com> <87shntfyv6.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <87mve1fq1w.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <87h948gau8.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <4b750f46-f27f-4f0b-8a8e-63c7ee9b8e51@googlegroups.com> <87bmugg2gb.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <87zii0e4vs.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <808dc4cb-bcd5-425e-8438-72695bfb3ba5@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net PSSlCzueiucfJQi/ndWbmAB3DYBaa8I8+LOm3s5MgytxRbG/aK Cancel-Lock: sha1:lojJctgjjhondpd2af2A1pMFDA8= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; SunOS i86pc; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.5.1 In-Reply-To: Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:103554 On 02/10/17 04:48 AM, Tim Rentsch wrote: > Ian Collins writes: > >> [...] >> >> Type systems aren't the result of the human burden of complexities, >> they are the result of code having to interact with the physical >> world. > > This statement isn't exactly right. The original motivation for > types in programming languages was to distinguish between various > formats for different kinds of data. As the understanding of > what programming entails has progressed, the notion of type has > evolved so that it now encompasses (in some languages) much more > than just representation. To some extent this is true even in C: > an int and a const int have exactly the same representation, but > in some cases const int is a better choice precisely because it > helps developers understand the program more easily. So const is > an example of type system evolution resulting from wanting to > reduce the human burden of complexity. Good point well made. -- Ian