Re: OT: Language War (Re: "C" Manual)
On Sat, 29 Dec 2001, Jeffrey W. Baker wrote:
> about C++ (and C) and I don't think I can take it any longer. "Be
> like me, use a language with imperceptible market penetration." I
Why does market penetration matter? It's like saying Windows is superior
because everyone uses it; but if you believed that you probably wouldn't
be here.
> really think Mr. Joyner is my polar opposite. When I think of a
> computer, I think of an electronic device which will do such-and-such
> thing if you place value 0x37 at memory offset 0. When Ian Joyner
That's because that's what it is. But then no one derives any real
benefit from having 0x37 placed at offset 0.
> looks at a computer, he wants to represent his model of the universe
> inside it. The computer and the human are fundametally different
Which is a much more valuable task! No wonder he wants to do that.
> things. You'll expend an aweful lot of energy trying to represent
> human concepts in a computer. By contrast, it is very easy for a
> human to learn computer concepts.
Representing human concepts in a computer is the central purpose of
programming.
> If you ask an Eiffel programmer how to get the value of a byte at a
> given offset in the computer's memory, they'll start with an
> explanation about why the programmer shouldn't concern himself with
> computer memory; memory is in the "how" domain. From there, they will
So... why *should* the programmer concern himself with individual bytes of
memory? (Assuming he is writing an ordinary application and not a hardware
driver or something similar).
Reply to: