Peter St. John wrote: > > > On 4/4/08, *Joe Landman* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[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.
K&R C is actually pretty spooky. Every time I look at old C code, I feel like I'm walking into a haunted house. Separating the interfaces of your functions from the data-typing is really a bad semantic -- I'm glad they superseded it in ANSI C. -- Geoffrey D. Jacobs _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
