Re: Fun with C

["George P." <george.priv@gmail.com>]

On Apr 18, 5:20 pm, "Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> wrote:
> On 4/18/2011 2:01 PM, Georg Bauhaus wrote:
>
> Someone who programs in C/C++ and other weakly
> typed languages, can spend 5 days to find a bug,
> then they would feel so proud of themselves, and may
> be even get a raise from the boss, because they
> keep finding more bugs.
>
> But if they would have used a better language,
> a more strongly typed language, then this time would
> have been saved to work on the design and the algorithm
> itself, and think about the problem itself.
>
>...
>
> --Nasser

How true.  I know good C coders that show very little interest in
application part of software design. The pride is built around
performance gains individual can produce. That rarely exceeds 10-20%
though.

The fundamental difference between C and other languages in my view,
is that C is not exactly a high level programming language.  It is
built around simple mini-computer architecture and as such is limited
by it.  It has it's place ofcorse. After all, one can write compilers
generating C code.

Coming back to my project here is the JSF Coding standard rules that
we follow indeed states:

http://www2.research.att.com/~bs/JSF-AV-rules.pdf

AV Rule 162
Signed and unsigned values shall not be mixed in arithmetic or
comparison operations.
Rationale: Mixing signed and unsigned values is error prone as it
subjects operations to numerous arithmetic conversion and integral
promotion rules.

Obviously that one slipped through. No wonder since these rules are
141 pages long.  Well, computers are still programmed by humans
(unfortunately) ;-)


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