From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fac41,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,4b06f8f15f01a568 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public From: jdege@jdege.visi.com (Jeffrey C. Dege) Subject: Re: College, C, etc. Date: 1998/10/30 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 406555565 References: <6skfs7$2s6$1@hirame.wwa.com> <35F252DD.5187538@earthlink.net> <6t4dge$t8u$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6t5mtp$4ho$1@news.indigo.ie> <35FFE58C.5727@ibm.net> <3600E72E.24C93C94@cl.cam.ac.uk> <6ts1q0$vo2$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <361DBC60.C153BBAD@earthlink.net> <36228EC3.4F7381FD@domain.nul> <3630b064.23189339@news.supernews.com> <3630C8DC.DF508803@fv.com> <3634DC76.57788481@fv.com> <3638548E.5CB0@dmu.ac.uk> X-Complaints-To: abuse@visi.com X-Trace: ptah.visi.com 909720996 209.98.6.59 (Thu, 29 Oct 1998 22:16:36 CDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 22:16:36 CDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-10-30T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: On Thu, 29 Oct 1998 21:56:30 -0500, Paul A. Howes wrote: >> Sure. The advisor in question wanted to draw pictures of communicating >> finite state machines Basically, he wanted to animate Estelle programs, >> which are formal descriptions of network protocols... The other student >> trying to do this was using C and XLib,... >> ...I wrote a smalltalk program in a >> week that would draw a state machine animating, consuming it's input >> string and creating it's output string. The prof was sufficiently blown >> away at the apparent ease > >My partner and I wrote a distributed fractal generator. We had 16 servers >rendering it, and as many clients as you want displaying fractals. The >teacher's first reaction when he saw the client side was, "Oh, pretty. Are >you actually using any servers to create this image?" Then we showed him the >terminal we were remote-diplaying all the servers on. After he got his jaw >off the floor, he gave us an "A" and walked away shaking his head. Both of these say more about the class libraries provided with the language than they do about the language itself. The C standard library is fine, so far as it goes, as is the C++ standard library, but they are very limited in scope. Any non-trivial application in either C or C++ involves non-standard third-party libraries to provide basic functionality, like GUI, threading, IPC, networking, etc. This means that C and C++ have a high ramp-up cost before anything useful can be produced. Of course, it also means that the C/C++ environments can be easily ported to new platforms. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean much to most developers, who work on a limited number of well-established platforms. SmallTalk and Java have both chosen different trade-offs. -- Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You, too? Thought I was the only one." -C.S. Lewis