C, please die,

Todd Killingsworth killingsworth.todd at gmail.com
Wed Dec 3 14:10:52 CST 2014


>And ADA seems to be pretty much dead.

Just because its not currently in fashion, or wasn't adopted by the public
at large doesn't mean it's dead.

Ada is embedded in all kinds of automated systems, from radar installations
to command & control system to jets.  Not going anywhere.

COBOL is fantastic for boring repetative transactional processing.  Its
been around forever, not going anywhere.

FORTRAN is fantastic for mathmatical modelling and has decades of
customized libraries for various esoteric modelling, some of which I'm sure
nobody wants to try and port simply because they would have to churn
through the math to make sure it was correct.  (Do you want to 'port' 50+
years of libraries from Los Alamos and verify they are EXACTLY the same as
the originals?)  Been around forever, not going anywhere.

C - First language that was widely accepted that had low-level flexibility
and power, a small program footprint, and could port easily across
architectures.  If its embedded and not assembler, chances are its C. Not
going anywhere.

Java (like it or not) and its rat's nest of frameworks was the first widely
accepted programming language for internet transactions (front, middle, and
back end).  And it is turning into the COBOL of the internet.  But the
world isn't going to universally trash their e-commerce systems anytime
soon ( unless Larry Ellison keeps suing people for not using Java the way
he thinks it s/b used). Not going anywhere.



On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 2:50 PM, Chris Elmquist <chrise at pobox.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday (12/03/2014 at 10:52AM -0800), Chuck Guzis wrote:
> > On 12/03/2014 09:42 AM, ben wrote:
> >
> > >PL/1 anyone?
> >
> > Well, given all of the criticism that's been brought up, shouldn't we
> all be
> > programming in Ada?
>
> Ya, I mean, who in their right mind would take an operating system kernel
> written in some 15 million lines of that crappy C language and build
> and sell one billion devices running it?  Who?  That would just be nuts...
>
> --
> Chris Elmquist
>
>


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