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

[Bob Stout]

In an article of <25 Oct 89 00:59:04 GMT>, (Jim Giles) writes:

 >From article <2104 at se-sd.NCR.COM>, by rns at se-sd.NCR.COM (Rick Schubert):
 >> [...]
 >> 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. 
 >...
 >This newsgroup ... is also read by non-computing
 >professionals who may have control of the policy of their computing but
 >without specific programming knowledge themselves. 
 >...
 >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?

Well, that makes everything perfectly clear! How fortunate we are to have  
concerned, enlightened folks like you defining what the true wave of the  
future is for us poor ignorant mortals! Tell me, should we simply sit on our  
thumbs while we wait for your pure language or do we have your permission to  
use some of these lesser tools? If so, which may we use, please? I'm sure you  
wouldn't approve of assembly or Forth or anything like that and C is obviously  
out as well. Will perhaps Pascal, Modula-2 or Ada be OK? I'm sure C++ is  
almost as odious as C due to guilt by association and kinship. Please  
enlighten us further - inquiring minds want to know!

By the way, are you perhaps closely associated with a hardware vendor with a  
stake in selling the ever more powerful hardware required to make these  
dog-slow memory hog languages look like they're running efficiently, or are  
you simply an academician without any grasp of real-world non-ivory tower  
programming? Having done some work with LANL (C-5 & C-6), I know virtually all  
of the real work done there is FORTRAN anyway.

Sorry, Charlie - I do this stuff for a living, not as a theoretical exercise.  
I've had to write too many embedded systems in assembler because there simply  
wasn't a HLL that could run accceptably on hardware that fit in the budget. To  
me, C and Forth (yes, I even use the F-word programming language - gasp!) are  
the most valuable tools I have. For example, an elevator controller (a typical  
job for me) may be an exercise in AI programming, but if you try to tell a  
controller manufacturer what sort of hardware you'll require to write it in  
LISP or Smalltalk, you'll find out in a hurry what competitive pricing means  
as they show you the door!