From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Sun Apr 29 2001 - 21:49:04 MDT
On 4/29/01 7:48 PM, "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
> James Rogers wrote:
>>
>> I am not saying that C should be a first language, but I think a strong
>> argument can be made that it should be your second or maybe third. I never
>> use C for general application programming, but there are many things I work
>> on that could not be done well without it.
>
> I agree, except that I'd substitute C++. The point I am making is that C,
> and to slightly lesser extent C++, still suck. I have more accumulated
> experience in C++ than any other language, but I would never use it for
> any problem that could be solved in Python or Java.
I would actually say that C is better than C++, mostly because C has a good
reason for existence, while C++ doesn't. C++ is an ugly bastard of a
language that seems to have inherited the worst of all worlds. C on the
other hand is arguably somewhat elegant and well-designed for what it is (a
universal assembly language). Most of the problems occur when people use it
for more than this. In practice, I often use the tiny subset of C++ that
actually offers an improvement over stock C, but not enough that I would
call the code "C++" ("C+" perhaps), as I refuse to use most of the paradigms
C++ supposedly offers. My use of C++ is still completely procedural, which
is appropriate for what I would normally need to use C for.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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