Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Keith Thompson Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: usecases of void foo(char **b) {} Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2016 13:04:18 -0700 Organization: None to speak of Lines: 50 Message-ID: References: <49899127-bf04-4a84-a374-5bebfbe7f4f7@googlegroups.com> <2bf83e98-eb96-4ab6-b1ca-4e6a8bd824f5@googlegroups.com> <5b33a608-8f61-4ea0-be08-080018f5772c@googlegroups.com> <87mvhjo3jw.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <3a09f5ec-d4f7-40fa-9855-b5c3f02ce4e9@googlegroups.com> <87ziljks6k.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <2199a2dd-d844-4f8d-bfe0-6a7c2854277b@googlegroups.com> <87twbqlsin.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <87oa1yljof.fsf@bsb.me.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="55d562a779fc0ae2b1f2a983cf45db85"; logging-data="7665"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18QeCVjLbXxATnfDIc68VCS" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:6ErgTdeGL4hV66h2Rj50IT+T79Y= sha1:i40eXT4rMzKOJGkw/dGSD2Aimfs= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:95616 BartC writes: > On 02/11/2016 16:17, Keith Thompson wrote: >> BartC writes: >>> It's all win-win. But that fact that no one can see that, or is >>> pretending not to (perhaps because it's far too late to fix now), is not >>> surprising any more. >> >> It's far too late to "fix" now. > > I've been making similar complaints here for at least a decade I think. > Was it too late then as well! Yes. > I wonder when /would/ have been a good time to bring it up? 1970? Probably. 1978, when K&R1 was published, was certainly too late to make such a radical change. > Actually the real problem is that there has been no competitor to C, or > if there has been, it has disappeared. There are hundreds of competitors to C, but none that have been able to occupy its niche as successfully. There are reasons for that. And before you ask, no, I'm not claiming that this is due to C's superior design. I claim no expertise on *why* C has been so successful, but I think a lot of it is historical accident. > Meanwhile people only exposed to C have been brainwashed into thinking > that's just how things are done (with big compilers and big, > temperamental tool chains), so there is even less chance of something > different emerging. What you call brainwashing, I call education. If you're programming in C, then the way C does things is the way things are done. If you want to do things in some other way, use something other than C. > Not at this level anyway. People creating new languages seem to be > interested in more advanced ones. Low-level ones aren't sexy. There are a number of prominent newish languages with low-level features. -- Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org Working, but not speaking, for JetHead Development, Inc. "We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this." -- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"