how relevant is C today?

[Scott David Daniels]

gregarican wrote:
> Here are a few languages I recommend most programmers should at least
> have a peek at:
> 
> 1) Smalltalk - The original object oriented programming language.
> Influenced anything from Mac/Windows GUI to Java language. Terse, clean
> syntax. IDE rolled into an operating system rolled into a set of core
> libraries.
Simula actually is the "original o-o language (as Smalltalk's authors
freely admit).

> 2) Lisp - Along with FORTRAN, one of the oldest programming languages
> still in use. Pure functional programming model that is extensible and
> has many derivatives. Great for mathematical purposes. Easy to learn if
> you can get past all of the nested parenthesis :-)
The functional style is not what was unique to LISP.  LISP was the first
language whose behavior was fully specified before it was implemented
(and that definition was completely machine-independent).

> 3) C - The "Latin" of modern programming languages. Used in low level
> tasks (e.g. - hardware drivers) as well as larger projects (e.g. -
> operating systems and other programming languages). Logcal, explicit
> flow albeit a bit wordy.

--Scott David Daniels
scott.daniels at acm.org