tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770855.post114352095445355215..comments2024-03-28T03:20:57.393-04:00Comments on The Little Calculist: C rots the brainDave Hermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405190527081772997noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770855.post-1170201176285570762007-01-30T18:52:00.000-05:002007-01-30T18:52:00.000-05:00We can to some extent blame the popularity of C th...We can to some extent blame the <I>popularity</I> of C though. Perhaps when K&R wrote their book, they didn't know any better, but things have happened since then. However, C's popularity initially (and even today it's more popular than it probably deserves to be), has helped people to ignore the languages which would have broadened the ways they think about programming. People moved to new languages that were not very different from C. About the largest change for the popular languages has been the move to OOP, which is a decent collection of abstractions, but imperative OO languages still allow people to ignore different ideas about evaluation, or control over side effects. Also, the more popular OO languages have been the ones which were actually <I>less</I> object oriented, allowing people to fall back into that imperative comfort-zone and not really think much about whether there's a better way to use the abstractions that are available.Cale Gibbardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02239068589033148700noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770855.post-1144937420259438092006-04-13T10:10:00.000-04:002006-04-13T10:10:00.000-04:00While it may be unfair to blame C for this, I can'...While it may be unfair to blame C for this, I can't help but rage against this and other aspects of it daily now that it's an integral part of what I'm doing. At least it makes sure that I <EM>won't</EM> want to do this for any longer than I need to at this point, and then I can get back to doing what I <EM>should</EM> be.Steviehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08950188991093066574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770855.post-1143571851842936812006-03-28T13:50:00.000-05:002006-03-28T13:50:00.000-05:00I think this is grossly unfair to C. C isn't resp...I think this is grossly unfair to C. C isn't responsible for stack allocation of continuation frames, or for lack of proper tail calls. It just brought along the assembly language traditions, which wrote code the same way. I don't think we can blame Kernighan and Ritchie for not anticipating Guy's insight (which was written *after* C).Sam Tobin-Hochstadthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12049111326816937908noreply@blogger.com