problems/risks due to programming language

[Henry Spencer]

In article <4397 at cbnewsl.ATT.COM> feg at clyde.ATT.COM writes:
>> ([C/C++] remain eminently usable languages for people who know what
>> they're doing, although incompetents and novices should definitely
>> avoid them.  Alas, all too many of the "real programs" in the world are
>> written by incompetents and novices...)
>
>While I agree 100% with everything you said in this article in
>support of the modern C language, aren't you being a little
>contradictory in your postscript?  Unless you anticipated
>Dennis Ritchie, one day you too were a novice in C.  Fortunately
>you didn't avoid it.  (;-))

I should have drawn slightly finer distinctions here.  Programming novices
should avoid C, period.  Experienced programmers who are C novices should
use C cautiously and avoid using it for production software, if possible,
until they're used to it.  Incompetents should go somewhere where their
lack of talent will not be noticed, e.g. the local DoD contractor. :-)
(It's no accident that one big push for languages that try to legislate
competence comes from DoD...)

Yeah, I was a C novice once.  I'm glad that all the code I wrote then
is dead and buried.
-- 
MSDOS, abbrev:  Maybe SomeDay |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
an Operating System.          | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu