From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: *** X-Spam-Status: No, score=3.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, RATWARE_MS_HASH,RATWARE_OUTLOOK_NONAME autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 10db24,4cf070091283b555 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Tim Behrendsen" Subject: Re: What's the best language to learn? [was Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/08/18 Message-ID: <01bb8d30$c5a08a80$32ee6fce@timhome2>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 174972196 references: <4u7hi6$s2b@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us> <01bb8c6d$c62d44c0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <4v5aji$qmo@solutions.solon.com> content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 organization: A-SIS mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer Date: 1996-08-18T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Peter Seebach wrote in article <4v5aji$qmo@solutions.solon.com>... > In article <01bb8c6d$c62d44c0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com>, > Tim Behrendsen wrote: > >Well, what sense does that make? C is not instantly readable to > >someone who only knows Fortran. If you don't know the language, > >then it's not going to be instantly readable. > > I object to this. I found C instantly readable. When I was a kid, > I had the source (in C) to a game called hack. I had never even heard > of C; I didn't know what it was, I just knew that it supposedly was > "the source" to hack. (My understanding of source had to do with an > unnamed language in which every statement had a number, and there were > 52 variables, half of which were strings, and half of which were > numbers.) Well, there's muddling through, and then there's "instantly readable". I can muddle through POWER assembly on my RS/6000 box when I'm decoding a core dump, but I couldn't sit down and start writing a real program. > But when I wanted to know how the game worked, I paged through printouts. > Nothing hard about it. What's tricky (to someone who knows that "HP: 12/12" > means you have 12 out of a possible 12 "hit points") about > u.hp = u.maxhp = 12; The tricky part is understanding the structure notation. If I was a FORTRAN programmer, for example, that would be completely alien to me. It's not I couldn't figure it out eventually, but it wouldn't be immediately apparent. Actually, the only FORTRAN I remember is 66; did they add structures to any later revisions? OK, how about I've only used BASIC my whole life, and you shove an APL program in front of me? :) -- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com)