Re: Fun with C

["Elias Salomão Helou Neto" <eshneto@gmail.com>]

On Apr 19, 11:28 am, Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauh...@futureapps.de>
wrote:
> On 4/19/11 3:10 AM, Elias Salomão Helou Neto wrote:
>
> >  what I meant was basically that: people will keep doing
> > dumbness because they are just people (me included). No matter what
> > language is used.
>
> Agree.  Perhaps one language can make being stupid more difficult
> than another, then.
>
> >> There is evidence that different
> >> fundamental type  systems help non-dumb people solve their problems more
> >> successfully.  People will still be using C libraries and additional
> >> code generators, as a replacement for a better suited type system.
>
> > I would like to see this evidence.
>
> One comparative study, not entirely free of all bias I would think,
> but pretty close to standard experiments yielding valid data,
> was conducted over several years, by John W. McCormick. It is
> about a project that switched not subjects or algorithms but the
> language. The result was published in August 2000 ashttp://www.crosstalkonline.org/storage/issue-archives/2000/200008/200...

I've had a difficult time reading the report because the authoring
software did not embed the fonts (this kind of thing makes me itch),
making it difficult to read it in full because metrics were wrong.
This is not my fault, the document simply was not made to be read by
others if fonts were not embedded.

>  From which is this quote:
>
> "Upon reading the project listings and team member diaries,
>   I concluded that the major advantages of Ada for these
> students were, in order of importance:
> • Modeling of scalar objects.
>    – Strong typing.
>    – Range constraints.
>    – Enumeration types.
> • Parameter modes that reflect the problem rather than the mechanism.
> • Named parameter association.
> • (...)"

You've quoted those which make sense. But what about "Arrays whose
indices do not have to begin at zero"? While it is a workaround and I
don't actually recommend it, in C you can simply declare an array with
a size slightly (+1) larger and use it as it started at 1.

Also, students of an introductory course do not qualify as "non-dumb".
Most professional programmers are dumb and had likely gone through
some kind of course like that. Anyway, it is good evidence in favor of
Ada for embedded projects written by real-life programmers, but I
don't remember to have disagreed that Ada would be better for non-
competent (real-life) programmers.

For the record, I've recently seen in this newsgroup a discussion on
how difficult is to hire good programmers, most couldn't even do the
most basic bit manipulation in whatever language. That's why I say
that real-life programmers are non competent.

So, ok, you're right in advocating Ada. It is just not fair to bash C.

Elias.