Re: Fun with C

[KK6GM <mjsilva@scriptoriumdesigns.com>]

On Apr 19, 10:11 pm, "J-P. Rosen" <ro...@adalog.fr> wrote:
> Le 17/04/2011 21:19, Elias Salom o Helou Neto a crit :
>
> > All reasonable men will try to learn the language before programming.
> > The mentioned behavior is the one C is supposed to have, whether you
> > like it or not. It one of the first thing I teach in my C classes:
> > type promotions in expression. They may be dumb, or may not, I will
> > not argue on that. But being reasonable is knowing the tool before
> > trying to use it.
>
> I really wonder why there are barriers on balconies. All reasonable
> people know that being too close to the edge of the balcony is dangerous.
>
> Here is a quote from one of the first books on C, written by K&R:
> "C was designed under the assumption that the programmer is someone
> reasonable who knows what he is doing".
>
> Here is a quote from the introduction to the Ada LRM:
> "Ada was designed with consideration for programming as a human activity"
>
> I let as a philosophy homework that these two starting point led to
> completely different languages.

A simple extrapolation of a 2002 study puts the worldwide cost of
buggy software at about $350 billion today.  1/3 of that cost is
incurred by developers, 2/3 by end users.  I want to know who these
reasonable developers are who are OK with losing $120 billion per year
using "popular" languages when all the data points to languages that
could reduce that figure dramatically.

And I'd like to know what their customers would think (the customers
who are losing $240 billion a year) if they knew that they were being
sold buggy software even though there were proven languages that could
reduce that loss dramatically.

So, by what standard is the use of C "reasonable"?