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From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: ANSI C and POSIX (was Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada)
Date: 1996/04/19
Message-ID: <dewar.829970326@schonberg>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 150845527
references: <JSA.96Feb16135027@organon.com> <DppsHq.1Ar@world.std.com>
 <829279436snz@tsys.demon.co.uk> <dewar.829346082@schonberg>
 <4knr5l$gb1@nntp.Stanford.EDU> <dewar.829400155@schonberg>
 <01bb2dd0.a8395e00$c6c2b7c7@Zany.localhost>
organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.edu
Date: 1996-04-19T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Bradd said

"The standards are a lot more accessible now with the increased popularity
of the Internet. I've read both standards, and the bigger problem is the
inaccessible legalese of the standards themselves, which are written for
compiler vendors, *not* programmers."

Any programmer who cannot read an informally written standard like the
ANSI C standard has in my view a serious lack of capability in understanding
written specifications. These standards are definitely written for
programmers, and any competent programmer should be able to read them
once they have a reasonable introduction (I am not claiming that tpyical
programmers can learn a language from the standard).

By informally written here, I am making a contrast with a formal
standard, written in formal mathematical style, which can indeed
be somewhat inaccessible to programmers not well trained in
mathematics.

P.S. Who do you think reads these documents at "compiler vendors". I will
let you in on a secret: the answer is "programmers"!