no comment

[hamei]

http://lists.community.tummy.com/piperm ... 04874.html

[VenomousPinecone]

Barnum was right, but the phrase for my generation was the idiom of a car salesman: "There is a ass for every seat".

Funny thing is, windows is worse than a practical joke (if true).

[lisp]

Parody or not, most of the points still stand.

C and all of it's derivatives are abominations. Unix shackles most programs to 1960s technology - just look at the laughable state of threading.

[lewis]

How is it laughable?

[Alver]

C: a cross-platform PDP-11 assembler... but still probably the most powerful language around, whether it's a complete PITA to use or not.

[squeen]

Am I stupid? (Don't answer that! ) I just *love* C. Its simplicity. Its power. I can't stand layers of abstraction if they can be avoided.

Just like the OpenGL programming manual defines it in its glossary:

God's programming language.

[hamei]

Just like the OpenGL programming manual defines it in its glossary:

God's programming language.

Nah, that was FORTRAN. That's why the week is only six columns wide, then we get a day off

[lisp]

C: a cross-platform PDP-11 assembler... but still probably the most powerful language around, whether it's a complete PITA to use or not.

Nonsense - anything LISP derived shows up C as the exceedingly weak and awful language it is.

[lisp]

How is it laughable?

The primitives are exactly that - primitive. There's 30 years worth of research into better methods of locking and multitasking. All ignored because the Lowest Common Denominator (i.e. POSIX) has no support for them.

Programmers are lazy, and for the most part, incompetent - they'll muddle around fscking it up trying to used outmoded techniques rather than implement the modern techniques on top. The only way round this inherent flaw in programmers is to provide the functionality as standard at a higher level, but no one will use it because it's not present in the Lowest Common Denominator.

[lisp]

Am I stupid? (Don't answer that! ) I just *love* C. Its simplicity. Its power. I can't stand layers of abstraction if they can be avoided.

I think you've answered your own question ;P

Anyone who thinks C is powerful has obviously never had the luxury of a language with closures, first class functions, lambda expressions or even nestable function scoping.

Just like the OpenGL programming manual defines it in its glossary:

God's programming language.

I won't get on to my opinion of those with religious convictions

[Alver]

Programmers are lazy, and for the most part, incompetent - they'll muddle around fscking it up trying to used outmoded techniques rather than implement the modern techniques on top. The only way round this inherent flaw in programmers is to provide the functionality as standard at a higher level, but no one will use it because it's not present in the Lowest Common Denominator.

I wouldn't call it a flaw... rather built-in masochism It's a total pain to create high-level apps in C, but it can be done without TOO much hassles because of the gazillion libraries that exist.

Point remains, C was never intended to do what it does nowadays. GUIs in C? Well, the PDP coders propably didn't even know what a GUI was back then, but they'd call us crazy if they saw how things are done. C is very close to the hardware, and that's where it's at its best - driver stuff, middleware, etc. C *is* the most powerful language around from a language's point of view, because it can access all hardware directly without any restrictions. From a programmer's point of view it's a weakling since you can't use techniques that were common even twenty years ago.

(can we all agree on that one? )

[squeen]

Am I stupid? (Don't answer that! ) I just *love* C. Its simplicity. Its power. I can't stand layers of abstraction if they can be avoided.

I think you've answered your own question ;P

Anyone who thinks C is powerful has obviously never had the luxury of a language with closures, first class functions, lambda expressions or even nestable function scoping.

Just like the OpenGL programming manual defines it in its glossary:

God's programming language.

I won't get on to my opinion of those with religious convictions

touche!

Agreed. I've only ever used C++, FORTRAN, Pascal, BASIC, and MATLAB's butched language. I've used a little lisp, but never felt much at home there either. I would like to know what "first class functions and lamda expressions (Lagrange multipliers?)" are, but again it's the flatness of C that appeals. Mainly, it C++ and it's derivatives that repulse me. (Overloading--good gravy!).

I also like Motif.

[lisp]

I would like to know what "first class functions and lamda expressions (Lagrange multipliers?)" are

I'll let wikipedia explain them, because my explanations will suck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-class_function
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closure_%28computer_science%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygienic_macro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_expression

Scheme isn't object oriented, but it's trivial to add the capability, and make it pretty much seamless. It doesn't have coroutines, but these too can be added. Want prolog style backtracking? Few lines of code, and it's as if it was designed into the language in the first place. It has a macro system so powerful that you can redefine almost any aspect of the language to suit your application.

It should be taken into account that Scheme is a member of the Lisp family - about the second high level language to be created, way before C. The fact we're still using something as primitive as C as the primary computer language would be sickening if I weren't so desensitised to the stupidity of the world!

[Ravege]

Mainly, it C++ and it's derivatives that repulse me.

We've been an Ada shop where I work for sometime, but some new projects we've started developing are required C++ - just about everyone of us is ready to hang ourselves

Our principle software is a Kalman filter for tracking satellites written in Ada with a GUI component oringinally in C/Motif and then C++. The Ada part is about 90% of total written lines, yet about 60% of all bugs being written are against the C/C++ side Stability standpoint alone, going from Ada to C++ reminds me of moving from Unix (SCO) to NT/W2k: it took some effort to break SCO while Windows was very willing to barf on its own accord (not to say what we do is representative of most programming today).

Unix shackles most programs to 1960s technology - just look at the laughable state of threading.

Hear hear, the only reliable way our software could break SCO

[lisp]

We've been an Ada shop where I work for sometime, but some new projects we've started developing are required C++ - just about everyone of us is ready to hang ourselves

Ah, Ada - my favourite language for other people to program in Although despite it's BDSM nature, it's an excellent example of using the right technology for a job, and tends to have it built into the language, where it should be.