[TUHS] : C dialects (was: I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary)

[Paul Winalski]

On 3/13/23, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> Frankly, I'd probably rather see ISO drop a bunch of the stuff they are now
> requiring and fall back at least to K&R2 -- keep it simple.

I agree.  Every language has toxic features--things that seemed like
good ideas at the time but turn out to have been mistakes when they're
better understood.  Every good programming shop has its rules
concerning certain language features or practices that are not allowed
in the code, usually for safety or maintainability reasons.

Dropping toxic features from a language does happen at standards
committees, but it's rare.  The best case I know of where this
happened was when the international standard for PL/I came out.  They
started with IBM PL/I but then dropped a bunch of features that were
either obsolete (e.g., sterling pictures) or downright dangerous
(e.g., the DEFAULT statement).

On the other side of the spectrum you have the BASIC standards
committee.  BASIC has always had to live down a reputation that it's a
"toy language" not suitable for "serious programming".  The standards
committee seems to have suffered from an inferiority complex, and it
seemed from my perspective that as fast as the PL/I committee chucked
out toxic language, the BASIC committee adopted them.  The result is a
bloated, grotesque monstrosity that little resembles the simple, clean
Dartmouth BASIC 6 that was the first programming language I learned
(from the DTSS TEACH command).

-Paul W.