From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <200305081711.h48HBv525515@augusta.math.psu.edu> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] same functions everywhere In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 06 May 2003 09:09:32 GMT." <3EB37781.1030903@null.net> From: Dan Cross Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 13:11:57 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: a4da1ff6-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 > I have the opposite opinion. I took a substantial > chunk of code from BRL's MUVES project, which was > very careful to "unwind" partial operations upon > errors, and rewrote it using a C exception package. > The result was cleaner looking, easier to follow, > and somewhat smaller, with explicit gotos (necessary > to unwind nested operations) removed. That is a win. Sounds like a good candidate for writing in C++ or a similar language. C isn't optimal for writing really big applications; it's great for smaller things like utilities, text editors, systems software, etc. But it's frankly inconvenient for building huge programs. It's just too low-level. E.g., if I ever have to write another hashing function to try and implement some sort of string-based lookup again, I'll scream. I don't understand why everyone feels the need to try and shoehorn their favorite language into every conceivable problem domain. C doesn't need a low-level string type, nor does it need exceptions; what programmers who are looking for those things need to do is look for another language. - Dan C.