On 10/15/2011 2:55 AM, Alfredo Covale da wrote:
If today's software were Fortran descendant, software were better?
It would probably be faster. Fortran call arguments can't alias, which
means a compiler is far less constrained in changing the order of
operations (e.g. running work in parallel on multiple cores or on
accelerators like GPUs).
Fortran 2008 has most of the features of C++ other than permissive use
of raw addresses.
Ritchie himself joked "the power of assembly language and the
convenience of ... assembly language."
One can find numerous examples of hardcore system programmers like Linus
Torvalds loudly objecting to attempts to make C compilers (gcc) too
smart. C is a clean small language for portable programming on
hardware. I think the world have been a better place had people
recognized that a long time a go and moved on. It is pretty much a
given that almost any new language that has a chance of success will
share properties of C, if not actual syntax. Unfortunately, properties
that made for practical systems programming on a PDP/11 35 years ago are
not the properties that should guide all kinds of programming today.
Many of the security fixes that daily stream into your PC or Mac or
Linux system basically you can blame on C (and C++) programmers, and
abuse of typing.
Dennis Ritchie, of course, moved systems programming forward and made
the world a better place. The spectacular lack of creativity that
followed can't be blamed on him.
Marcus
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