🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, Marc E. Fiuczynski wrote:

> You got it. Well sort of.  I don't think that Java has unsigned longs (or was that signed).
> Someone had a tough time implementing MD5 in Java, because it was missing this feature. This
> is just a nit pick. Java is still evolving and I'm sure that it will have all the basic 
> programming features.

Hmmm... the concept of *long*s is interesting to me. One of C's greatest 
flaws is the varying size of ints, longs, shorts, etc. (IMHO). Integers 
should be at least 32 bits long (16 bits just isn't enough), but when you 
want specific-size numbers, there should be a way of declaring them. When 
you ask for an int, what you should get is a reasonable integer (whether 
that be 32-bit or 64-bit... I'm beginning to lean towards the latter). If 
you need 32-bit integers (exactly), then you should be able to ask for 
that. Furthermore, with all sorts of networks and interoperability 
questions, such features (for canonical types) are becoming more and more 
useful.

> I just started to read some papers on ALEF, which is the PLAN9 C-like programming language.
> Any users of this language care to share their anecdotes.

Any language with the advantages of C's conciseness and simplicity along 
with safety, etc. is interesting. Unfortunately, it's going to be a while 
before anything displaces C/C++.

- Trung