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Article #1210

Re: Portability of code & skills (Beware of "C" Hackers etc)

#1210
From: Graham Perkins
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 1996 13:14
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Jay Martin wrote:

[re: passing local proc/fn as parameter in Pascal]
> This is what I call side-effects on a global variable (or variable of
> a larger scope).  Its not what I call good programming practice.  In
> fact, I see nested procedures as implemented in algol block languages
> (automatic importation of variables from larger scopes) as another
> stupid idea of CS.

I was originally suggesting that there are some powerful concepts in
various languages and other paradigms that transfer very awkwardly
or not at all into the C language.  While I do not believe that programmers
who work with C are necessarily hackers, I would maintain that without
significant exposure to other languages they will unknowingly be locked
into a poverty of expression.

That particular Pascal feature can of course be abused just like any other.
But if you have done some functional programming and made use of function
parameters and curried functions, you will find it possible to design some
tasks according to that paradigm and use the local functions to simulate
currying.

If that's not your cup of tea, then don't bother.  But the point remains: a
powerful concept is directly provided by some languages and supportable in
others.  But not C.

-- 
person: Graham Perkins         paper: School of Computing
voice:  +44 (0)1908 834936            De Montfort University
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!yama.mcc.ac.uk!dmu!usenet
From: Graham Perkins <grp@dmu.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.object,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Portability of code & skills (Beware of "C" Hackers etc)
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 1996 13:14:46 +0000
Organization: De Montfort University
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