I started it, so now a big answer... Please ? Thats a lot of stuff for that small thing. Most versatile, flexible and portable ? Lets see: Define most versitale - is that usable for any task ? Basicly all programming languages are usable for anything (well, at least the general purpose ones). And flexible ? Isn't that redundant ? In fact, if you compare C to PASCAL you may notice that there is almost no difference in the basic elements. Almost anything writen in PASCAL can be ported straight to C and the other way. Now, portable - I assume you talk about the portability of the compiler and not the programms (I did spend more than just a few hours to convert C programms between different platforms and compilers). Well you're right, the compiler is fast to port and you need a very low time until it will produce code, and a bit more until it runs native (most time spend on building a minimal OS-like runtime). Just, where is the gain if the produced code is way inaprobiate for the CPU ? No, don't tell me that's just optimisation. It isn't. C unlike almost all other HLLs implies a specific CPU Model. If the CPU is not build acording to this model all code will suffer - even if the CPU offers all stuff needed to do the task. Lets take (the often used - but realy simple) example of string handling. Let's assume you want to move a 10 byte string. C strings are by definition byte orientated and terminated by a byte containing the NIL code (x'00'). If you look at the PDP style CPUs thats a real nifty thing, since you have no problem to move and check the contend at once and do the incrementation. The resulting code is fast and even in assembly a lot of people would write the same code. Now lets port our compiler to a /370ish machine where you have two kinds of block move operation (MVC and MVCL) but no CC is modified by the bytes moved ... instead of using a single operation (or a single serias of operations) this definition of a string forces the compiler to generate a series of 5 instructions MVC, CLI, LA, LA, BC (plus two preceeding load instructions). Instead of a single MVC to move the 10 bytes, these 5 instructions have to be executed 10 times - resulting in 50 instructions instead of one - do you consider this as a good portable ? Even a UCSD P-Code machine can do better (and is an example of a even faster way to port a language). (I skip the 'ever' part, I know you Americanos trend to over emphasis with constructs like this :)) Controll of hardware ? My memory may be fading, just I can not see any reference to hardware controll in my K&R copy. All hardware dependant stuff is proprietary to the compiler you are using. And that's the same way as for example in PASCAL Elegance in design and structure ? Maybe, because it's hard for me to recognice elegance if 66% of all code is needed to overcome limitations of the language or to rebuild basic stuff all the time. In my opinion C is the 'best' possible blend of all drawbacks of assembler with all drawbacks of non-assembly high level languages (I consider Asembly in contrast to Machine Language as high level). Things like messing up the whole programm by one wrong ; or } (something impossible on Assembly) or easyly produce memory leaks (hard to do on other HLL). Well, of course. With ADA you may code anything As Ethan already described, C is tight bound to the PDP CPU model. While ADA is (like PASCAL) without a CPU Model. Unlike PASCAL, ADA offers a lot of ways to describe your data and your intention on the data so the compiler is enabled to choose for every target processor a complete different implementation, since he has more hints what you are about to do. Also ADA offers tools to define way more complex things with simple statements. Using parallel processing within your code ? Just tell the compiler, and if you're running on a machine capable to do SIMD, your programm will get an additional kick. Need Semaphors or other tools of IPC ? Tell the compiler about it, and no matter what operating system, you'll get what you want ... etc. pp. I could go on for hours. Shure, you have to write a bit more text than in C to build the 'Hello World' thing - but if Hello World is your goal you should go for Basic or dBase. In real applications ADA programms will be often more compact than C - in terms of bytes ! SMALL is for example a simple Text adventure engine to fit in just 42KB of Sourcetext - where more than 50% is comments (Hard to create this in C and keep all advantages of a real HLL). Of course ADA is objectorientated. ADA has a lot inherited guys may feel like home. Maybe take a look at http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/ The EPFL has put up some real usefull pages. www.adahome.com is also a good start. And yes, Bill S., A bad programmer can screw up any code. Just in ADA it needs more effort to produce bad code than C. I apreciate programming languages in two conected things: First a language should help me writing a program - thats I 'just' have to make my idea clear and the compiler has to generate code - best possible code of course. To reach this goal I need rather sophisticated construct and not only the most basic ones - this also goes with the good code - if a language like C offers onla the most basic operations it is (almost) impossible for the compiler to guess what I'm about to do and optimize the code accordingly. With usable higher elements I may give more hints on my intention and the compiler may generate better machine code - example: C doesn't include any operation to move data other than the very basic elements (Byte, Int , Float). So if I order the programm to move a structure I use a loop to copy byte by byte - hard for a compiler to optimize this into a block move operation (if available. Other languages may compile this different - they may for example generate a single block move, or a series of unrolled moves or even more processor specific tricks (load multiple registers/store multiple register - a real nifty trick on 68K processors to save cycles). And writing A:=B is way more easy than memcopy(...) - less work for me and better optimisation (Yes, I know that some C compilers optimize memcopy() - just thats a bad trick. And second: A programming trick is like Laws or Locks - it is about keeping honest people honest. If the effort to do it the bad / wrong way is bigger than to do it right, the number of 'faults' will be way reduced. Dick, you say you use C to generate the basic stuff. Thats fine, just I can't see what an Assembler can't do. Let's first agree that Assembler equals to Macro Assembler - and than it's just a bit of _one_time_ work to make any C compimer senseless. Alison: Exactly the problem described above - The CPU modell upon which C is designed is the PDP-11 and C is made to force the programmer to code everything thats not within this basic set by himself - and lateron the compiler is unable to interprete the intention to generete more sophisticated code for more sophisticated CPUs. Pascal on the other hand has no implied CPU model and can't force this model onto the programmer. Gruss H. Oh, a last thing: Yes, I'm doing C when forced to - And that is not the rare case. And No, I'm not doing a lot in ADA - 95% of all my programming is Asembly. And Another thing, I wasn't in for a Language War, but rather realy wondering what happened to the language world. -- VCF Europa am 29./30. April 2000 in Muenchen http://www.vintage.org/vcfe http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe