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About the C programming language...

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  About the C programming language... aminer <aminer@toto.net> - 2014-06-07 03:06 -0700
    Re: About the C programming language... aminer <aminer@toto.net> - 2014-06-07 03:10 -0700
      Re: About the C programming language... Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-06-08 02:21 +0000

#2426 — About the C programming language...

"One of my goals in the study of program proof techniques is to assist 
in the design of better programming languages, ones which make it easier 
to write correct programs and harder to write incorrect ones. ...

It is a matter of continuing regret that so few languages have ever been 
designed to meet that goal, or even to make significant concessions 
towards it. For example, the programming language C was designed to 
assist in writing a small single-user operating system (UNIX) for a 
real-time minicomputer (PDP 11), now thankfully obsolete. For this 
purpose, its low level of abstraction and plethora of machine-oriented 
features are entirely appropriate. For all other purposes, they are a 
nuisance. The successful propagation of the language can be explained by 
accidental, commercial, historical, and political factors; it is hardly 
due to any inherent quality as a tool for the reliable creation of 
sophisticated programs. ..." - C. A. R. Hoare, 1994

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#2427

Hello,

It was a statement from C. A. R. Hoare (case statement, quicksort fame) 
in "Great Papers in Computer Science", 1996. He wrote a preface in 1994 
to his and Wirth's paper "An Axiomatic Definition of the Programming 
Language Pascal" to put that paper in context.



Thank you,
Amine Moulay Ramdane.

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#2432

On 2014-06-07, aminer <aminer@toto.net> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> It was a statement from C. A. R. Hoare (case statement, quicksort fame) 
> in "Great Papers in Computer Science", 1996. He wrote a preface in 1994 
> to his and Wirth's paper "An Axiomatic Definition of the Programming 
> Language Pascal" to put that paper in context.

Everything Hoare wrote about C pretty much applies to Pascal. (And what
was that bit about Unix being a single-user operating system?)

Pascal and its ilk are just inconvenient implementations of the same concept
as C.

Any Pascal program can be translated into C, while retaining essentially the
same organization of its code and data.

Plus C has additional powers so that the reverse isn't the case.

Also, C isn't the same language that Thompson and Ritchie invented to develop
and support Unix. By the end of the 1980's, there was ANSI C; a considerably
improved C with better type safety.

Donald Knuth was a big Pascal programmer. The TeX type setting system and
surrounding tools were developed in Pascal after all.

You take a look at this: http://tex.loria.fr/litte/knuth-interview

  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).

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