great quote about the "C" language
Linda Todd
lindato at tektronix.UUCP
Fri Dec 2 18:19:47 AEST 1983
In the 1981 US Dept of Commerce NTIS report #4634,
A. Evans of BBN has some great quotes:
I get the impression that C's designers
were charged $1000 for every reserved word
in the language and $2000 for every concept,
that C programmers are charged $5 for
every character in the program,
and that minimizing this cost was a
major design goal.
...
With short int, int, and long int, the
C programmer can specify enough information
so that the compiler will probably get it right.
The governing word here is "probably",
an idea which seems to pervade much of C's design.
To my way of thinking, "probably" isn't good enough,
and I feel quite unconfortable about this aspect of C.
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