21 Sep
1998
21 Sep
'98
4:18 a.m.
At 10:33 AM 9/21/98 -0400, CLASSICCMP(a)timaxp.trailing-edge.com wrote:
In _BYTE_ 1982:6 p182, you'll find
Thomas Kurtz (yes, *the* Kurtz of Dartmouth) describing the draft
standard as it then existed, and he actually sold a working version of
this called "True BASIC".
I think I own a copy of True BASIC for the Amiga.
True, but C itself if far from portable. The endless
maze of #ifdef's
that are necessary to make a piece of source code portable among a limited
set of machines and OS's are fine and dandy unless you have to support all
those different permutations!
Straight ANSI C must be the most portable language for contemporary
computers. Java is written in it. :-) C++ is another matter, it still
has too many flavors. Depending on the app, portability can be a great
hassle (if you expect portable GUIs) or a non-concern (in command-line,
text-based apps).
- John