Vis Naicker wrote:

>> It doesn't help pretending that Pascal isn't dead in the professional
>> world, or make this into yet another "this language is better than
>> that language" pissing contest... It's about finding out why Pascal,
>> with all the perceived advantages, didn't make it -- and, arguably,
>> at this point, has little chance of making it ever.
> 
> I have 3 days of unread mail so this thread might be dead by now ;-) 

This goes back many years, and didn't die so far... :)

> But a reminder - the point brought up early in this thread was that
> there are some weak points in C. 

Nobody contends this.

> Other languages does some things better. 

Nobody contends this either.

> And K&R could have incoporated those strong points into C to make it a
> better language.

Could have, for sure. I'm also sure when you look at any of your past 
projects, you won't have a hard time finding something that you could 
have done to make it better. This is how things work, so nothing new 
here.

> Instead it is coming up 40 years and I still make silly errors with c.
> As mudane as case sensitivity on occasion. Other better programmers
> have lost countless hours debugging - ...

Most of these errors are due to insufficient programming environments. 
How many people still program without syntax highlighting? Without 
autocompletion? Without an editor that scans your sources while you're 
writing and knows all the symbols and their scope? Without something 
like lint that would catch 99% of these silly mistakes (independently of 
the fact that most of them were already avoided by using a more 
appropriate editor)? Just because it doesn't come out of the box with 
whatever compiler you installed doesn't mean it's not there. This is not 
related to C, this is related to lack of doing what a programmer needs 
to do. 

As much as I disagree with Olin on some issues (which sometimes seems 
that it's just for the sake of bringing up a heated discussion :), look 
at how he invests in his environment. If you invest a tiny fraction of 
this (thought, time, money) into a C environment, most of the issues 
with C are gone.

> ... and the reason is not that the language is not perfect, but that
> it is still little past version 1.0. 

I don't know how long you know C, but C has gone through some changes. 
Compare K+R C with C99...

> [...] what should have happened is that C should have evolved by
> copying what is right in these other languages. And become strong and
> super resistant. 

C had and still has to work in a way that the tons of existing code 
compiles. 

For the ones that don't need backwards compatibility, C evolved into 
C++, Java, PHP, C#, and any number of YACLLs (search for that term; a 
number of interesting articles out there). 

> 8086 turned into Pentium Core 2, Dos evolved into Windows 7. Apes into
> humans ... Instead with C we are stuck with 1970's tech.

Nobody is stuck with C. There are always alternatives. It may be that 
these are worse -- but then, they are worse and your problem isn't 
really with C but with the lack of better alternatives.

Which is what part of this thread was about... Why are there no better 
alternatives in some areas? Maybe because so many people don't like C, 
don't feel well with C, but still use it? Or because there's something 
unique about C that makes it so popular despite its (well-known, 
oft-discussed) flaws?

Gerhard
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