Can anyone recomend a good intoduction to C...

[Grant Griffin]

In article <77up6.1289$y6.235541 at ruti.visi.com>, grante at visi.com says...
>
>In article <983958878.976344 at newsmaster-04.atnet.at>, Werner Schiendl wrote:
>>
>>> I don't think C deserves all the superlatives you apply to it,
>>> but I agree that it's instructive to study C++ as an example of
>>> a language that gets it wrong. Take a good language, C; add
>>> some good ideas; and end up with a baroque mess. Fascinating.
>>
>>To be completely honest, I can not see the obvius reason why
>>C++ should be such a bad programming language.
>
>It's complicated and unsafe.  Either one is tolerable without
>the other.  When you combine the two, you're dead.

I dunno...I think you've hit on exactly its _strength_: it's complicated and
unsafe.

As a virtually 100.0% backwards-compatible superset of C, it has little choice
but to be complicated and unsafe.  By "unsafe", maybe you are referring to its
backwards-compatibility with C's pointers: C++ is unsafe because C is unsafe. 
By "complicated", maybe you are refererring to the fact that it supports both
procedural programming (from C) and OO programming (which is its whole reason to
exist).

But those of us who like C++ don't regret its complication or its unsafety; we
lthink of that more as being "powerful" and "flexible".

I would agree that C++ is somewhat _unnecessarily_ compilicated (primarily in
terms of its silly protection features), but then again, nothing's perfect. 
(Heck, even Python has "warts". <wink>)

Still, in terms of its design goal (of grafting OO onto C while being 100.0%
backwards-compatible), I personally think C++ is a real Work of Art.  (In
contrast, I find Perl's approach to grafting on OO to be distinctly hokey.)  I
think that C++'s choice of design goal, in combination with its success in
meeting that goal, adequately explains why large numbers of lemmings use it.

>>It is widely available (on almost any platform, I would guess).
>
>If 1 billion people do a stupid thing, it's still a stupid thing.
>

(And you gotta admire the chutzpah of that one guy who thinks that the 1 billion
people who disagree with him must, ipso facto, be wrong. <wink>)

>>It supports for a real large number of different design approaches.
>
>That isn't always a good thing. ;)

isn't-it-nice-to-know-that-we-grants-don't-always
   -agree?-<wink>-ly y'rs

=g2

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Grant R. Griffin                                       g2 at dspguru.com
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