Was Einstein wrong after all? (was: Re: ambiguous ?)

[Jim Giles]

>From article <2104 at se-sd.NCR.COM>, by rns at se-sd.NCR.COM (Rick Schubert):
> [...]
> It comes to no surprise to me, and probably not to most of the readers of
> this newsgroup, that this is your attitude about C.  I have a very serious
> question for you:  What is your purpose in participating in this newsgroup?

C is widely hyped as the "wave of the future" or as the only "serious"
programming language of the 80's.  I have seen books and popular magazines
that carry this hype to absurd lengths.  A balanced presentation of the
_real_ merits of the language is almost impossible to find.

This newsgroup provides a unique forum for the discussion of the language.
It is read by novices and experts alike.  It is also read by non-computing
professionals who may have control of the policy of their computing but
without specific programming knowledge themselves.  For the novices as
well as the non-computing types, it is useful to have a dissenting view
at least.

The truth is, all computing professionals should be concerned with
the subject of language design - the language is the _only_ tool
of our trade.  The real "wave of the future" hasn't been invented
yet, but we should all be concerned about it.  Computer professionals
should be discussing how best to integrate developments in OOP,
symbolic processing, and functional styles without sacrificing
the merits of conventional procedural languages. Continued disinformation
about the supposed value of C only detracts people from this issue.

Is it really desireable that genuinely bright people spend considerable
time discussing "the sizeof(struct)" or "(0) vs. NIL" (issues which
wouldn't exist in a well designed language to begin with)?  Or is it
better to dissuade as many as possible from pusuing this 18 year old
dead-end of a programming language?