Re: OT: Why is C so popular?
On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 08:32:31AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 06:21, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > It's relatively easy to learn, plus everybody else in the unix world
> > uses C. It's portable. It helps to know your history: C was created
> > to write unix to begin with.
>
> To sound like your mother: because everybody else in the world jumps
> off a cliff, does that mean you should? Of course not...
>
> In other words, programmers who use C primarily because "everybody
> else in the unix world uses C" and "C was created to write unix to
> begin with" are sheep.
Uh, that's what people do. The world is full of sheeple who just move
from one cliff to the next, and we all have to deal with the results.
Sometimes it's a cliff and you KNOW it's a cliff, but you don't really
have a choice.
The world jumped off the UNIX/C cliff, so we'll never get that last E
added to the creat() call.
The world jumped off the mainframe/COBOL cliff, so now some companies
are having to decide if it's more painful to try to keep upgrading and
enhancing existing systems or to throw away millions of dollars and
buy/build something to do what they need now instead of what they needed
30 years ago.
The world jumped off the IBM PC cliff, so we're still dealing with some
of the design mistakes IBM made the first time around.
Right now the world is in the process of jumping off the Java/J2EE/web
app cliff. I have a feeling that the Java apps written a few years from
now will be very, very different from what people are writing now.
Products like WebSphere, Tomcat, JBoss, etc. aren't big because they use
Java, Java is big because there are high-quality products that use it
and big companies with big marketing teams backing it.
It doesn't matter how good or bad Java, C, or any other language might
be. What counts is who's backing it, what you can do with it, and how
fast you can do it (how good the development tools are, how much of of
that code you already have, etc.). How important each of those is
depends on where you are and who you're talking to. A lot of times the
decision isn't even based on sound technical advice, just on company
politics, product marketing, and short-term cost.
--
Michael Heironimus
Reply to: