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jschell wrote: Rather certain that the precompiler is in fact part of the language
Yes, and as he said in his response, he didn't say otherwise. Some points I'd like to make are:
A language is defined by its compiler (not the other way around).
DMR probably could have made C without a pre-processor; I see no reason that C has to have a pre-processor other than that it does have a pre-processor. The existence of D and C# may support this view.
I have seen (I don't remember where) at least one argument that the C pre-processor acts on a different language than the C compiler does; and I am in about 90% agreement with that point of view.
I like the C pre-processor; it's really just a text processing utility -- it can be used for purposes other than its primary usage. (I even use it with C# -- Implanting Common Code in Unrelated Classes[^]) Unfortunately, it also has some functions (e.g. sizeof) that are tightly bound to C. 
jschell wrote: limiting oneself to just the "language" then C is in fact useless, since one cannot in any practical way do anything useful with the "language"
You may be arguing that the language is pretty limited without libraries, and that is quite true, very little can be accomplished without at least printf -- I have written a simple program that calculates a value and returns it from main, simply to demonstrate that something, no matter how pointless, can be done without linking in any libraries. However, I think the article was also pointing out the ease with which a developer can leverage a multitude of libraries with C. Just the other week I was playing with ODBC, and linking in only the ODBC libraries and not the "standard C libraries".
Of course, doing so still requires the pre-processor, as the Creator intended.
jschell wrote: I am going to take their word for it
Soooo... if Microsoft says that VB is the World's Greatest Language.... ? 
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: A language is defined by its compiler (not the other way around).
No. Compiler theory is a very complete area of study in computer science and most perhaps all successful languages build upon that. And within compiler theory the compiler is an implementation, nothing more.
And in terms of C, although perhaps not specifically this discussion, there are many ambiguities which the compiler is allowed to define but others which it is not.
PIEBALDconsult wrote: I like the C pre-processor; it's really just a text processing utility -- it can be used for purposes other than its primary usage
With something like 20 years of C/C++ experience I am pretty comfortable with what the language is and isn't.
PIEBALDconsult wrote: and that is quite true,
As I said.
PIEBALDconsult wrote: Soooo... if Microsoft says that VB is the World's Greatest Language....
Well first I was noting a technical point not a subjective one.
Second K&R when it was written was written in a different style than VB, so even if the author(s) of VB made a technical point then I would be less inclined to accept it (which is true of C# and Java as well.)
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Bushwa! That is one of its greatest strengths! There were only three mistakes in C, and one was fixed in C89 (if I recall correctly). The other two continue to plague us.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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No such discussion would be meaningful without first defining "better".
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Ahh yes c and paradox. mmmmhmmmm good.
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Perhaps.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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It may be fast, but not as fast as MASM. Just look at some of the created code in the .cod listing. Many, many, pipeline stalls in code initialization where a push and pop of ebx would free that reg to share loading eax, then ebx, then saving eax, then saving ebx, and this was in optimized code in a high use function in JKDEFRAG.
I'll stick with MASM.
Dave.
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Ahm, how about this language[^]? 
Don't mind those people who say you're not HOT. At least you know you're COOL.
I'm not afraid of falling, I'm afraid of the sudden stop at the end of the fall! - Richard Andrew x64
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'C' was its grade as a a programming language.
C++ got a grade of C-- 
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I agree. Granted that may be because I don't care to name any others.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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Chris, I am afraid you have the wrong information.
C is not a language, it's an alphabet.
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Rutvik Dave wrote: C is not a language, it's an alphabet.
Actually, it is just one element in a set called an "alphabet." We also have a 'D' and 24 other members in the set.
Will Rogers never met me.
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... and the English language has killed my joke, again! 
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The vast majority of the software out there is written in C. The vast majority of software out there has crippling flaws, are out of budget and abandoned after tried to use. QED
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OK, I'll "bite".
"C" is quite the most disastrous so-called "language"[1] ever to become popular.
Why? It's total lack of marshalling over record boundaries in memory have cost the globe at least several 100 trillion dollars in viruses, damages, fornicate-ups, interminable repairs/patches, Trojans, injuries, deaths, et cetera.
That alone is enough to relegate this incurable abortion of a syntactical nightmare to the bit-bucket, if not Spandau prison.
Have at it, you "C" devils.
___________________________
[1] Designed for punch-card use, brevity & conservation of card-space were essential.
It thereby became an impenetrably terse & line-break free mess. All calculated to save IBM punched cards.
And the syntax is dangerously ambiguous, all over the shop.
Don't get me started on the monumentally bone-headed notion that CASE statements should cascade through without a BREAK clause!
I mean. What total idiot "thought" that this would be a great idea?
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Michael Kingsford Gray wrote: the monumentally bone-headed notion that CASE statements should cascade through without a BREAK
 Hear! Hear! That is (in my opinion) the very worst mistake in C.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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Maybe, but at least it's consistent with the goto/label syntax.
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Maybe, but break doesn't affect a goto. And I have never used a goto in C.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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My point was that a series of case statements resembles a series of goto jump labels, and therefore there is an expectation for the flow of execution to continue, even past the next 'label'. The break command isn't associated to the case statement, it is associated to the switch block.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Stefan_Lang wrote: resembles a series goto
Not to me it doesn't.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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Because you chose to ignore the part that I specifically underlined. I didn't say <big>goto</big>, I said <small>goto</small> jump labels - that is a world of a difference!
How is the following
switch(a) {
case 1:
...
case 2:
...
}
different from
on a goto label1, label2
label1:
...
label2:
...
?
The multilabel on ... goto variant is present in many BASIC variants.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Stefan_Lang wrote: you chose to ignore
I didn't ignore it; the CP selection quoting doesn't like to select text with tags in it and I was too lazy to copy the other text into the quote.
Like this:
switch(a)
{
case 1:
{
...
}
case 2:
{
...
}
}
Stefan_Lang wrote: is present in many BASIC variants
C probably pre-dates them, so perhaps the designers of those variants got the idea from C . When I learned BASIC we didn't have labels, only line numbers.
ON a GOTO 100 , 200
Also, the lines/labels could be anywhere, not grouped together as with CASE statements. Ergo, to me a switch doesn't resemble an ON/GOTO at all.
BASIC (1964) doesn't appear to have had ON/GOTO.
BASICplus (that which I first learned on a PDP-11, and for which I have a book first published in 1976) has no labels and therefore ON/GOTO with line numbers only.
Turbo BASIC (1987) has labels and therefore ON/GOTO with labels.
In the late '80s I was using VAX BASIC and I don't recall it using labels, though it probably did. HPBASIC, the current version of VAX BASIC, does of course.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
modified 4-Jun-14 10:09am.
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Michael Kingsford Gray wrote: several 100 trillion dollars
everyone can make up numbers. Just to get an idea of how ridiculous a claim yours is, check this out: http://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-11116&y=-7100&z=4[^]
Even if the number you posted were accurate it means nothing at all without context, and you cannot provide that context either: You have to put it into relation to the amount of code written, and then compare to equivalent numbers for different languages.
Anyway, the vast majority of really severe and costly bugs are not related to any specific language feature at all, and could have happened in many different programming languages. For instance the Y2K bug was born at a time when C didn't even exist yet: it was a conceptual decision to save memory. Something that at the time made sense for any program, and was kept that way, until people started to realize that it would lead to a problem! That[^] was a costly bug!
Michael Kingsford Gray wrote: [1] Designed for punch-card use [...]
As all other languages at the time. And the punch card limits are no longer an issue in the modern C language (or other languages that survived: see Modern Fortran, Modern Cobol, etc.).
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Always was and always will be. IMHO. 
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I don't care so much about the language as everything else. When Java first came out, I finally had a system to write graphical desktop applications on different systems without a ton of BS. Sure people joked about AWT being "write once, debug everywhere", but compared to everything else it was light years ahead. I had libraries that actually worked - on average, I could not compile a C library, so who knows if it did what I wanted or not. I had really simple database access, network access, all the stuff I had wanted and couldn't seem to get. I was like a kid in a candy store.
This is the problem with C - not the language, but the lack of something akin to the JSR process, where standard libraries for all sorts of useful things are created. I'd be the first guy to say that Java programmers love to go overboard and make a Rube Goldberg library for everything with 59 layers of abstraction, whereas C programmers tend towards minimal libraries that do just what's needed and no more. But then those C programmers love macros and other things that make the code hard to understand, and they need systems like autoconf and ports trees to actually get their libraries to even compile on different platforms. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
So I still love Java for all it provides. The language is overly complicated, and generics are by far the singular worst - and completely unnecessary - feature. When I saw all these new script languages cropping up, I thought, well what about the library for database access, for generating spreadsheets, PDFs, reports, images, etc? I failed to see why I'd want to switch to something shiny and new that is clearly less capable just because the language was simpler.
Years later, I see people moving back to Java because they had scalability problems, or problems like this author described with something fundamentally wrong buried deep in the guts of the system. And I still don't see much in the way of database libraries and other things.
I have a chuckle when I read about such things. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm sure there are other languages that have a great set of libraries for useful stuff, I'm sure .Net can likely do a lot of the things I need. But would I be any better off with another language? I don't think so. And I can use other languages through the ScriptManager anyway, while retaining access to all the libraries Java offers.
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