[TUHS] : C dialects

John Cowan cowan at ccil.org
Wed Mar 15 05:48:59 AEST 2023


On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 3:24 PM Luther Johnson <luther at makerlisp.com> wrote:

> I'm talking more about where the intent is to invest languages with more
> "safety", "good practices", to bake certain preferences into language
> features, so that writers no longer recognize these as engineering choices,
> and the language as a means of expression of any choice we might make, but
> that the language has built-in "the right way" to do things, and if the
> program compiles and runs at all, then it must be safe and working in
> certain respects.
>

ORLY?  Do you reject C, then, because it does not support self-modifying
code or the ability to jump into the middle of a procedure without going
through the prologue?  These are baked-in preferences, and if a C program
compiles at all, you can be sure that it does neither of these things, even
if it would benefit your program greatly if they were available.

Some people would say that's exactly what the new dialects bring us, but I
> see too much artificial orthodoxy invented last week, and too many
> declarations of the "one true way", in many of the most recent languages,
> for my taste.
>

Since you agree that it is a matter of taste, there can of course be no
disputing it.
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