Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.lang.misc > #2045

Re: Wirth-ian languages

Show all headers | View raw

On 2014-04-28, BartC <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
> "Kaz Kylheku" <kaz@kylheku.com> wrote in message
>> Nobody really needs alternatives to C which are almost the same thing,
>> just with more clunky syntax and pointless limitations.
>
> Yes we do. It wouldn't take me long to list a hundred things that are wrong
> with C, yet after fixing all those the resulting language wouldn't do that

You'd have to read the specification of C first, or else few would
take you seriously. That could burn up a chunk of time.

> much more. It would just get rid of all the baggage, and have a smaller,
> tidier and more streamlined language that is far nicer to use.

C is already small enough to the point of being stupidly small.

>>> Most people don't get there but the constant
>>> stomping out of anything that isn't gcc has been very destructive and
>>> limiting generally.
>>
>> Nobody is holding gun to anyone's head regarding what to include in a
>> distro
>> of free software, and you can start your own if you don't like any of
>> them.
>>
>> Freeware distros give you more programming languages as standard packages
>> than any proprietary OS.
>
>> Look, even Knuth caved in:
>> http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/faq.html
>> See: "What is your favorite programming language".  That was more than 20
>> years
>> ago.
>
> Is this the same guy who devised MIX, a made-up machine language, to
> describe algorithms in his books? He probably isn't too hot on designing

It's also the same guy who wrote TeX in Pascal, using a "literate programming"
tool of his own design, so that the program and its documentation could be
produced from the same sources.

In a 1993 interview with "Computer Literacy Bookshops" 
(http://tex.loria.fr/litte/knuth-interview) Knuth said:

  CLB: Did you integrate WEB with C because so many programmers today are using
  it, or do you personally like C and write with it?

  Knuth: I think C has a lot of features that are very important. The
  way C handles pointers, for example, was a brilliant innovation; it
  solved a lot of problems that we had before in data structuring and
  made the programs look good afterwards. C isn't the perfect language,
  no language is, but I think it has a lot of virtues, and you can avoid
  the parts you don't like. I do like C as a language, especially
  because it blends in with the operating system (if you're using UNIX,
  for example).

  All through my life, I've always used the programming language that
  blended best with the debugging system and operating system that I'm
  using. If I had a better debugger for language X, and if X went well
  with the operating system, I would be using that.

  [Then he goes on to discuss an extreme case of X, where X was
  some awful language called IMP on some early Cray machine, but he used it
  anyway because it was well supported.]

It's clear that Knuth switched to C partly due to impetus, but he also likes
many of its spects, like how pointers are represented.

> There are a couple of things that are good about C: the language is
> ubiquitous, and compilers for it can generate pretty good code. But that
> says nothing about the language itself, which 'sucks' (and even C
> programmers agree about some of its problems).

Yes.

C has too many undefined behaviors, and also insufficient "reflection".

C could benefit from standardized access under the hood to answer questions
like "what function called me?" "what is the backtrace?" "how many arguments
were passed to me?" (or how many arguments are in this va_list?)

(Even if some of these things can't be implemented in some systems, it's better
if there is a standard API on those systems where it can be, and way to test
whether it is available.)

C would be a much better language if the operands of all operators, and
function arguments, evaluated strictly from left to right, and the whole
"sequence point" concept were discarded.

A longjmp which doesn't trash local variables would be nice, as well to have a
way to execute clean-up code unconditionally when a block is terminated by any
means.

Back to comp.lang.misc | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Wirth-ian languages bruce axtens <bugmagnet@outlook.com> - 2014-04-28 16:23 +0000
  Re: Wirth-ian languages Joe Hynes <theda@southpark.net> - 2014-04-28 17:31 +0000
    Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-28 18:47 +0000
      Re: Wirth-ian languages "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-04-28 20:35 +0100
        Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-28 20:18 +0000
          Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-04-28 22:50 +0100
            Re: Wirth-ian languages "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-04-29 00:03 +0100
              Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-28 23:51 +0000
              Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-04-29 07:59 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-04-29 10:04 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-04-29 11:33 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-29 07:41 -0400
            Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-28 21:46 -0400
              Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-04-29 08:24 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-29 07:33 -0400
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-04-29 14:38 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-30 21:28 -0400
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2014-05-01 10:44 +0100
              Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-04-29 09:59 +0200
                Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-29 15:51 +0000
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-04-30 10:57 +0200
                Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-30 15:47 +0000
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-05-01 10:18 +0200
                Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-05-01 16:56 +0000
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-05-02 10:10 +0200
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-04-30 18:27 +0100
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-05-01 10:18 +0200
                Re: Wirth-ian languages Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-05-01 17:10 +0000
                Re: Wirth-ian languages "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2014-05-02 09:22 +0200
  Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-28 20:59 -0400
    Re: Wirth-ian languages "Rod Pemberton" <dont_use_email@xnothavet.cqm> - 2014-04-28 21:10 -0400
    Re: Wirth-ian languages Nils M Holm <news2009@t3x.org> - 2014-04-29 07:52 +0000
    Re: Wirth-ian languages "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-04-29 09:45 +0100
  Re: Wirth-ian languages Jacko <jackokring@gmail.com> - 2014-04-29 05:37 -0700

csiph-web