back-flaming

[crm at duke.UUCP]

In re: foo[6..20] --

DAMN STRAIGHT!  I'D LIKE JUST THAT!

The "beauty" of C lies in the fact that the C-jocks can write programs
that simulate PDP-11 assembly language in an HOL.    It works fine for
systems programming, but it's NEVER commented well enough and it has too
many holes in it where an unsophisticated user can trash the program
in ways that are hard to find and hard to fix.  Modula-2 works just fine
for system-level stuff (having read a good part of the Lilith operating
system, I can tell you that it is easy to follow and to understand) and
has the advantage that it catches a lot of the little mistakes one makes
at compile time, rather than cluttering the directory with "core" files.

Ghod knows I like C better than Fortran for these things, but that's NOT
a recommendation.

The fact that a book of C puzzles CAN be written should have excluded
it from serious consideration as a production language.

Charlie Martin
...!duke!crm