On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 01:36:06AM +0100, Zach the Mystic wrote: > On Tuesday, 29 January 2013 at 19:21:34 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: > >Even worse is all the millions of man-hours wasted in (usually > >incorrectly) trying to make C code portable to theoretical C > >compilers that have ints larger than 32 bits, etc., trying to > >ensure that modern C code will work on a 16 bit C compiler, and on > >and on. > > > >By defining these problems out of existence, D achieves a major > >simplification in terms of programming bugs that are far more > >theoretical than real. > > You know, defining a problem out of existence is a damn good way of > solving the problem!
The point was that these problems are by and large non-problems. Even where these issues are applicable, people are already not using stock C compilers anyway, so it's pointless to address them in the general case. If you're somewhat familiar with the details of the C standard, you'll realize that a laughably large percentage of C code currently in use is actually invalid C (either due to undefined behaviour, or incorrect reliance on sizeof(char)==1, or a whole bunch of other obscure rules that most C programmers aren't even aware of). Even some of the most portable C code out there is actually non-portable according to the standard. T -- Those who've learned LaTeX swear by it. Those who are learning LaTeX swear at it. -- Pete Bleackley