From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 7396 invoked from network); 2 Jan 2022 02:13:19 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 2 Jan 2022 02:13:19 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 7844A9D041; Sun, 2 Jan 2022 12:13:17 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B48BF9CF06; Sun, 2 Jan 2022 12:12:59 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id C7D819CF06; Sun, 2 Jan 2022 12:12:57 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 3FA1C9CE58 for ; Sun, 2 Jan 2022 12:12:57 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id C400535E0F8; Sat, 1 Jan 2022 18:12:56 -0800 (PST) Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2022 18:12:56 -0800 From: Larry McVoy To: Steve Nickolas Message-ID: <20220102021256.GD7055@mcvoy.com> References: <20211231234039.GU31637@mcvoy.com> <202201012000.201K0Fd31610896@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <20220102001244.GF10078@mcvoy.com> <20220102012033.GB7055@mcvoy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Subject: Re: [TUHS] roff(7) [ and other related stuff ] X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: TUHS main list Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Sat, Jan 01, 2022 at 08:47:11PM -0500, Steve Nickolas wrote: > >If you think any of those other languages remotely approach the elegance > >of C, I just don't know what to say. > > This. > > I think it blends terseness, cleanness, simplicity and ease of use in just > the right quantities in a way no language before or since has really been > able to muster. Its only real weakness to me is that it isn't very good at > string handling (the reason I sometimes kitbash stuff in BASIC still). Function pointer decls drive me nuts. I agree with the string stuff, any scripting language handles that for you behind the scenes. C could add a String type that did all of that. We did that by hand in BitKeeper and it worked great, it is completely doable. All of the warts aside, you could take C and extend it to do a bunch of useful stuff and still have it be C. We tried with little-lang.org that is very C like but has almost all of the scripting goodness that tcl has exposed in a C like way. Check out the switch statement. Check out regexp. It's just part of the language, it is not function calls. Very pleasant and easy to use. little as a programming language is pretty dead, but as a proof of concept, it should be very much alive. If I had more money, cough, Rob, Google does, I'd fund a dialect of C that had all the C goodness and mixed in the right amount of scripting goodness. I'd come out of retirement to work on that. And I say that as this guy: http://mcvoy.com/lm/boat who is going out on the ocean tomorrow for crab. I love my retirement, I fish all the time, 60+ times per year, I'm really not interested in going back to work. But if someone threw a bunch of money at a team of people who wanted to make C as fun as Perl (or Python, I get it, Perl isn't cool any more but I loved the usefulness), I'd like to be Rob and Ken for that project, this is a giant overreach but I think I could bring taste to that project. If that ever happened, I think a lot of people on this list and elsewhere would like the result.