Re: "Subtract C, add Ada"

[ncohen@watson.ibm.com (Norman H. Cohen)]

In article <3frqpg$re5@cronkite.seas.gwu.edu>, dobrien@seas.gwu.edu
(David O'Brien) writes: 

|> In article <3fnf28$s3f@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> you wrote: 
|> : It's a question of who optimizes your code.  In the 60s,
|> : when C was developed, compilers *couldn't* optimize code,
|> : so the programmer had to.  Many apparently-bizarre C
|> : capabilities are there to support optimization level -1
|> : (programmer does the optimizations).
...
|> : Consider the common C idiom to copy a null-terminated
|> : array, usually a string [syntax may not be quite right]: 
|>
|> :      while (*a++=*b++);
|>
|> I am curious about programming culture.  Notice that when someone writes
|> something in C they feel they have to remove all white space.  When they
|> write in Ada they put in plenty and use [very] long names for every
|> thing.  Why is that???  No wonder people say C is hard to read.

It's because the primitive compilers of the 1970's were incapable of
optimizing away the whitespace. ;-)

--
Norman H. Cohen    ncohen@watson.ibm.com