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From: ok@mudla.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Richard O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Death of C (Re: TH)
Message-ID: <2729@munnari.oz.au>
Date: 16 Nov 89 08:57:49 GMT
Article-I.D.: munnari.2729
References: <12542446812.15.CAROZZONI@TOPS20.RADC.AF.MIL>
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In article <12542446812.15.CAROZZONI@TOPS20.RADC.AF.MIL>, CAROZZONI@TOPS20.RADC.AF.MIL writes:
> 	Your right, C was designed specifically for the PDP 7 instruction set, 

This is not true.  C is
	BCPL
	- with a few syntax changes, e.g. $( ... $) ==> { ... }
	- with "update" operators (which were quite fashionable at one
	  time, Algol 68 has them -- remember "prus"?)
	- plus Pascal-ish types
There wouldn't have been a whole lot of point in matching the immediate
predecessor of C (called, oddly enough, B) to the instruction set of the
machine it ran on, because it wasn't compiled to that instruction set.

> 	Standardization among C compilers can best be shown by the Billions 
> 	and Billions of "ifndef"'s and "ifdef"'s in any C program such as 
> 	the Emacs Editor source code. 

Heck, you should see the contortions that are needed for Fortran, except
that it hasn't got a standard way of doing it.

I've used "the more I program in C, the better I like Ada" as a .signature,
but let's get our facts straight.