Are you saying has been no progress since K&R C in the number of
libraries available to C programmers? And that C programmers still
have to edit files with vi and compile and link by specifying all
files on the command-line?
You may disagree, but the evidence points in the opposite direction.
There are tens of thousands of robust C libraries available to suit
any particular programming need. Many of Haskell's own libraries are
based on C versions. Tool support for the C language (not for some
successor you might think would exist if the language continued
evolving) can detect memory leaks, detect memory overwrites, apply
dozens of automatic refactorings to C large-scale C programs, etc.
Library and tool support for the C language is light years beyond
Haskell. It wouldn't be there if we had been through 20 iterations of
C each completely breaking backward compatibility.
Regards,
John A. De Goes
N-BRAIN, Inc.
The Evolution of Collaboration
http://www.n-brain.net | 877-376-2724 x 101
On Feb 26, 2009, at 1:08 PM, Achim Schneider wrote:
"John A. De Goes" <j...@n-brain.net> wrote:
What do you mean by "progress"? I noted before that there are
tradeoffs. Constraining the evolution of the language in backward
compatible ways leads to substantial improvements in tools,
libraries, and the speed of compiled code. That's progress in several
dimensions -- just not along the dimension of "language".
I disagree. Backwards compatibility can be the very reason no
progress _can_ be made in the areas you mention. The C toolchain was
and is a mess for anything but small, uniform, single-platform
programs, things like valgrind of course outperform plain lint in a
variety of ways, but are still hacks around the language's major flaws
(And I'm speaking as a C-fan, here). Further breakthroughs in C
compiler technology will require stalin-like brute force and library
support... well, did you ever use yacc or libxml and compared them to
Haskell solutions?
Java generics are broken by design, for the questionable benefit of
backwards compatibility. Leave those Bad Decisions to language
communities who don't care about Doing It Right. "Right" being a
technological measure here, not how well politics sell to accountants.
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