Clearly, it is too late to fix c99 - C is dead

[Alan Balmer]

Because they are not. See Mark Twain story at bottom (one of my favorites).

(Or, to put it a little succinctly: Back at ya!)

--- Begin Story ---
Q: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?
A: 4. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.

I think that one was old before Mark Twain wrote it down <G>.

I grew up near Elmira, NY, where Clemens spent a good deal of his
writing time. They've made the study where he wrote Huck Finn a
tourist attraction.

 

[Keith Thompson]

HTH.

No, this doesn't help.

What Mark McIntyre actually wrote in the article to which you replied
was:

] No he wouldn't. Even the average man on the street knows that there are
] computers in pretty much everything these days.

If you want to correct what he wrote, do so. Changing someone else's
words and claiming that they're what he wrote is incredibly rude and
dishonest. Don't do it again.

(This is the second forged quotation I've seen today; what's going on
around here?)

 

[Jarno A Wuolijoki]

Q: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?

One.

 

[Keith Thompson]

Because they are not.

[snip]

Look up the word "computer" in a dictionary. (There's a free online
dictionary at www.m-w.com.) Think about whether an embedded system
meets the definition. Then, if you want to discuss it further, go to
alt.usage.english; it's off-topic here.

 

[Dave Vandervies]

Because they are not. See Mark Twain story at bottom (one of my favorites).

(Or, to put it a little succinctly: Back at ya!)

--- Begin Story ---
Q: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?
A: 4. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.

If you call a leg a tail, how many legs does a dog have?


dave

 

[Kenny McCormack]

(This is the second forged quotation I've seen today; what's going on
around here?)

We do it because it is fun!

 

[CBFalconer]

We do it because it is fun!

PLONK. Never to be seen again on this system.

 

[Derrick Coetzee]

You're really naive if you believe this. Just because it's native code
it doesn't mean that it runs necessarily as fast as the native code
generated by a C compiler from a C program solving the same problem.

Java's portability comes at the cost of Java being an overspecified
programming language.

That's true. My statement that all native code runs just as fast is
totally wrong. At least you know when you write something in C that
it'll pretty much map right onto the machine (while running a Java
program making extensive use of "int"s on a 16-bit machine for example
would be really slow).

 

[Richard Bos]

Another data point: No reliable embedded system runs Windows.

s/embedded//, TYVM.

Richard

 

[one2001boy]

This looks like a (slight) overstatement of the case to me.

C++ is really the only "true" descendant of C; the other C-like languages

not sure how you define "true descendant".
Can C/C++ interpreter Ch be called the true descebdant of C? C++ extends
C with OO. Ch extends C with built-in string for easy scripting and
other extentions for numerical computing. Of course, C99 complex, VLA,
IEEE floating are well supported.

 

[Dan Pop]

Another data point: No reliable embedded system runs Windows.

How about the Microsoft Xbox?

Dan

 

[Dan Pop]

That is a special purpose system. Not a general purpose system that can
be programmed.

It may not be a general purpose system, but someone did program it,
nevertheless.

The crux in a computer is that it can be programmed to do any new
task you want by using the processor's instruction set.

The very same computer can be used in a general purpose computing system
and in an embedded control application. Once upon a time, 8086 chips
were quite popular on the logic board of hard disks. No idea what they're
using these days, but I have performed firmware upgrades on modern hard
disks. And I've both used general purpose computing systems based on Z80
chips and programed Z80 chips used in embedded control applications.

This supposes access to the processor instruction set, and a mean
of directing its actions using a programming language.

This is entirely true for embedded control systems, too. How do you
think they get programmed in the first place?

You could convert the microwave in a computer by adding the
necessary software, but then... it wouldn't be a microwave
oven anymore...

You don't have to: the microwave oven has a *complete* computer inside:
CPU, memory, I/O devices. It's not any less of a computer just because
it doesn't look like your PC and it doesn't run Windows. Computer and
general purpose computing system are two different things.

How many people know the actual number of computers inside their PCs?

Dan

 

[Alan Balmer]

How about the Microsoft Xbox?

What makes you think it's reliable?

We did a prototype wireless card reader using Win CE. The MS
salesperson estimated development time as two weeks - it was closer to
six months. (I wasn't directly involved with the project, so won't
testify as to the reasons.) The final version worked well enough, but
it was hardly a critical application.

 

[Thomas Stegen]

Quite. And I don't want any database application written in VB or Java
on _my_ network, thank you very much. Java is for slow, broken Web code;

Haha, I wonder how this can be true when the company I work for (approx.
200 employees) uses Java and has no failed projects and a better
referencability than any other company in this particular sector. We
don't really write web code so this is not directly contradicting your
statement, but still a valid point I feel.

Could our platform have been written better in a different language,
maybe. The main benefit of Java is that it can talk to almost anything
between heaven and earth because it has massive industry wide support
for most things.

Yes, hundreds of customers have been served and they are all happy,
or at least that is what they are telling us. At least the customers
for whom our product generates hundreds of millions of pounds of
revenue for each year.

Then again, we use Java to develop our development platform (which is
quite large). The people who develop specific solutions only use this
platform and does not write any Java. Though some companies has bought
the platform and uses it to develop their own products.

Personally I don't find Java a particularly good language nor a
particularly bad language, I do find that I write code faster in Java
than with C even though I've used C more. For code that is not to
complex and needs to be fast C is the best language. Same goes when lots
of hardware access is needed. In most other cases I will choose
something else.

 

[Dave Vandervies]

not sure how you define "true descendant".
Can C/C++ interpreter Ch be called the true descebdant of C? C++ extends
C with OO. Ch extends C with built-in string for easy scripting and
other extentions for numerical computing. Of course, C99 complex, VLA,
IEEE floating are well supported.

That sounds to me like "C implementation with extensions", not "descendant
of C".


dave

 

[Dave Vandervies]

[Attributions for this one got lost]

[snip]

The crux in a computer is that it can be programmed to do any new
task you want by using the processor's instruction set.

By that definition, my parents' microwave is just as much a computer as
their PC running Windows is.

Both can be programmed to do any new task you want (within the limits of
computability and hardware resources) by someone with the appropriate
tools. Neither can be programmed by anybody in the house or by using
only tools found in the house.


dave

 

[Mark McIntyre]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 21:27:03 GMT, in comp.lang.c ,

Because they are not.

Heck, even wikipedia gets this right.

"As currently defined by The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition
(OED2) a Computer is a device for making calculations or controlling
operations that are expressible in numercial or logical terms."

I see nothing there about whether it has an intel processor, keyboard,
display device etc.

See Mark Twain story at bottom (one of my favorites).

And totally irrelevant. A tail is not a leg, so why call it one?

 

[Mark McIntyre]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 23:26:33 GMT, in comp.lang.c ,

We do it because it is fun!

Mhm. When I was at school, I knew lots of people like you. They too thought
making complete tossers of themselves was fun. Most of them ended up
getting poor grades, pregnant or bain-damaged. Or all three.

*plonk*

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...
Most of them ended up getting poor grades, pregnant or
bain-damaged. Or all three.

Alexander Bain, 1818-1903, Scottish philosopher. To have been
bain-damaged your schoolmates must be well into their second
century. I didn't think you were that old

(I thought it had to be a real word, but that's all I could find
in my dictionary)

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

And totally irrelevant. A tail is not a leg, so why call it one?

But a tale may well be a leg end