22 May
2020
22 May
'20
1:06 a.m.
On 5/21/20, Thomas Paulsen <thomas.paulsen(a)firemail.de> wrote:
Sorry, but I can't agree with that statement (like no other high-level
language). C is a decent language for systems programming but so are
other languages such as BLISS. C is a terrible language if you have
to throw arrays around (which is why Fortran still rules the roost in
HPTC).
C, Pascsal, and other modern Algol-ish languages have well-behaved
grammars and were designed to be easy to lex and parse. Fortran and
COBOL were designed before Chomsky's work on formal grammars became
well known, and as a consequence are bears to parse. Fortran has
context-sensitive lexical analysis, for example. But nobody knew any
better back then.
-Paul W.
I suspect the
real reason for C's sucess was the nature of the language.
it has most of the
elements of structured programming as known in the
70the/80ths, and - most important - it produces small and fast performing
binaries like no other high level language.