I take your points. C gives a lot of freedom, but all things are not 
possible. I think what comes to mind for me is when I see the idea of 
trying to limit solutions to use only certain certain "design patterns", 
I usually would go in the direction of more freedom and less rules.

On 03/14/2023 12:48 PM, John Cowan wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 3:24 PM Luther Johnson <luther@makerlisp.com 
> <mailto:luther@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.