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From: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>
To: Ronald Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com>
Cc: Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>, tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2023 12:28:12 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAC20D2NNLwA_Hv2OrgG9+xXTNoBCKVvnuYk5v0j8GzP8h3u4Dg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <em8d0da7e4-25c5-45d6-9bc7-c5539c96265e@4e8cf7bb.com>

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On Fri, Mar 10, 2023 at 9:16 AM Ronald Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> Multilevel breaks are as bad as goto with regard to structure violation.
>
Amen.  My memory of the argument at the time was one of pick your poison.
Each language has trade-offs and it depends on what you value. C was
considered "dirty" by many CS types in the day compared to languages like
Pascal, Simula67, Algol-X.

I've always said the key was what was left out of the language, not what
was put in. Dennis offers a few important pieces of wisdom here:

   - "When I read commentary about suggestions for where C should go, I
   often think back and give thanks that it wasn't developed under the advice
   of a worldwide crowd."
   - "A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
   in than some that do."
   - "C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success."


Arnold's observation about trying to be small is reasonable,
although contemporaries like BLISS did have support. So the comparison
should really be to BCPL, PL/360, BLISS, *et al*. for features/size
[although Wulf cheated, the BLISS-11 compiler was not self-hosting and
needed a PDP-10 to run it].


ᐧ

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  parent reply	other threads:[~2023-03-10 17:28 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 42+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-03-10 11:51 Noel Chiappa
2023-03-10 14:16 ` Ronald Natalie
2023-03-10 14:39   ` John Cowan
2023-03-10 16:30   ` Phil Budne
2023-03-10 17:50     ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2023-03-10 17:57       ` Paul Winalski
2023-03-10 18:12         ` Lawrence Stewart
2023-03-10 17:28   ` Clem Cole [this message]
2023-03-10 17:54     ` Paul Winalski
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2023-03-10 15:37 Noel Chiappa
2023-03-10 15:46 ` Larry McVoy
2023-03-10 16:04 ` Dan Cross
2023-03-10 18:55 ` Ron Natalie
2023-03-10 19:04   ` Dan Cross
2023-03-10 19:35     ` segaloco via TUHS
2023-03-10 11:37 Noel Chiappa
2023-03-10 15:54 ` Dan Cross
2023-03-12  7:39   ` Anthony Martin
2023-03-12 11:40     ` Dan Cross
2023-03-12 16:40       ` Paul Winalski
2023-03-13  3:25       ` John Cowan
2023-03-13 10:40         ` Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)
2023-03-13 12:19           ` Dan Cross
2023-03-09 23:01 [TUHS] " Steffen Nurpmeso
2023-03-09 23:18 ` [TUHS] " segaloco via TUHS
2023-03-09 23:21   ` Warner Losh
2023-03-09 23:31     ` Luther Johnson
2023-03-09 23:44       ` josh
2023-03-09 23:54       ` Warner Losh
2023-03-10  0:54         ` segaloco via TUHS
2023-03-10  1:08           ` Warner Losh
2023-03-10 10:08             ` Ralph Corderoy
2023-03-10 11:37               ` arnold
2023-03-10 11:56                 ` Ralph Corderoy
2023-03-10 11:59                   ` arnold
2023-03-10 12:11                     ` Ralph Corderoy
2023-03-10  6:15     ` Dave Horsfall
2023-03-10 16:55       ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2023-03-10 17:02         ` Bakul Shah
2023-03-12 20:47         ` Dave Horsfall
2023-03-12 21:50           ` Warner Losh
2023-03-12 22:27             ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2023-03-10  1:31   ` Rich Morin

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