Re: Quote for the Day

[enterpoop.mit.edu!Shiva.COM!world!srctran@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Gregory A]

>"When Bell Labs were invited to evaluate C against the DoD
> requirements, they said that there was no chance of C meeting the
> [STEELMAN] requirements of readability, safety, etc, for which were
> were striving, and that it should not even be on the list of evaluated
> languages.  We recognized the truth in their observation and honored
> their request."

    What's the point?  Considering that ATT and Bell Laboratories then
went on to use C/C++ for the largest real-time C3I system on the planet,
their phone systems, what's that say about the [STEELMAN] requirements?
I have always thought that there has been some denial inside the defense
world in assuming that only they have "serious" large scale real time
problems needing maintenance over many years.  If nothing else, consider
that the four main contenders for networking operating systems for the
future (coming out of Microsoft, Novell, Sun, and others), operating systems
which will be the foundation for most computing of all sorts in the
real world into the next few decades, are all written in C/C++.  Watch
how people spend their own money as a measure of something utility.

Greg Aharonian
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Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178