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From: papresco@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod)
Subject: Re: Theory #51 (superior(?) programming languages)
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Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 04:06:24 GMT
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In article <5cp8f6$m8p$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>,
Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote:
>papresco@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:
>>Knuth programs in C-Web, which is essentially C (as far as the 
>>programming constructs), and I think he qualifies as having
>>"a computer science education."
>
>Knuth is one hot programmer, computer scientist, mathematician,
>and writer.  But the claim was not about people like him, but
>about Software Engineers, and Knuth is not a Software Engineer.

The original post mentioned both a computer science education and
a software engineering education. Clearly Knuth has thought a lot
about both, and his education predates a degree that bears the label 
"software engineer".

>His _recent_ work uses C; notably "The Stanford GraphBase".
>However, I don't think you should use him as an authority for the
>use of C.  One of my treasures is a cheque with his signature on it,
>which I won by pointing out some errors in the code of that book.
>
>I won't go into detail, but I think it is a very telling point against
>C that an exceptionally experienced and exceptionally capable
>programmer with exceptional insight into machine level programming
>suffered from a number of fairly basic misconceptions about C, with
>the result that his code was less portable than it needed to be, to
>no advantage.  (If you doubt me, read the book.)

I did not intend to promote C or the use of C. I thought I was quite
explicit that many people with CS and SE degrees use C *but would 
rather not*. The original assertion was that most of them do not
use C. My personal observation from looking around is that most of them
do use either C or C++ because of many historical factors.

 Paul Prescod

