🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <id.WT4V.FC2@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
   In article <BEVAN.92Nov14094620@tiger.cs.man.ac.uk> bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan) writes:
   >    The only language that I would imagine might be a serious alternative
   >    to C among those that you have listed is Modula-2, but I'm not
   >    sufficiently familiar with its low-level features to say whether it
   >    could cover the same breadth of system-programming problems that C
   >    covers.

I didn't write the above.

   > Name the problems and we can find out.

[ This I did write ]

   Complete lack of anything like a standard runtime library. Not even all
   compilers provide the InOut library specified in Wirth, and those that
   do all end up having custom extensions for stuff I can do using stdio
   in C.

I agree the IO was a mess.  It has now been fixed (well almost :-),
but years too late.   IMHO Modula II is a classic example of how not
to go about standardising an existing language, though I should note
that the end product has merit.  I see parallels in the current C++
standardisation effort (have they decided on a string class yet?),
with the difference that I'm skeptical about any merit in the product :-) 

bevan