🚀 go-pugleaf

Peter Moylan writes:
>
>I'd like to hear more about this.  (I almost sent an e-letter,
>but then I thought that other readers of this group might also
>like to hear the details.)  I've been trying to find out why
>people like programming in C, and so far all I've heard are reasons
>like availability of compilers, "my employer makes me use it",
>and similar reasons which don't have much connection with fun.

From what I've seen, lots of people use C because they want
to be "closer" the the machine but don't want to use assembly
language.  For example, many programmers seem to think that using
pointers to step through a two-dimensional array is inherently more
efficient than standard indexing.  And that saying x = y = z = 0 is
somehow super efficient.  The general rule seems to be that
there should be a close correspondence between a C program and
its generated machine code.

There is also the "wizard factor," in that more complex looking
notations are deemed to be faster and just plain better.  You know,
stuff like "while(*p++);".

I think this all comes down to the myth that "C is a very efficient
language."  This would be better stated as "even a lousy C compiler can
generate decent code because the programmer does much of the work."
Better compilers for other languages (Modula-2, extended Pascal) and
the increasing complexity of C may put an end to this belief.
--
James Hague   
exuhag@exu.ericsson.se