On 4/4/08, Joe Landman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Sadly, when I taught some HPC usage/programming classes a few years ago at > my alma mater, the students varied between knowledgeable scientific > computing users in chemistry/physics/biology, to people who "knew" Java and > C++. The latter couldn't program in C for some reason. No. Really. Stop > laughing. (for those that don't get it, C++ is C with some extra stuff > added on ... they are for all intensive porpoises, the same language if you > ignore OO stuff, generics/templates ...) > > I'm sympathetic with C++ programmers who "can't program in C". It's trivial for me to code in C++: I can just write K&R C, it compiles and does what I want, because C is (with minute exceptions) a subset of C++. The reverse is not the case: C++ is a large language (compare Stroustrop's book, which looks like the Wheeler Misner Thorn holding down RGB's desk, to Kernighan & Ritchie; and Thompson's formal definition of B is like 3 pages). Few people know all the formal definition of C++, much less all the standard libraries; most work effectively with a subset. People who think of writing to a file as piping through a stream may not be aware of "printf" or "putc", and they need not be; unless you asked them to write someting that would compile in ANSI C89. However, I would expect that a competent C++ programmer could **learn** C pretty quickly.
Peter
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