What a wanderer could wonder about...

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Use C, or not use C, that is the question

Use C, or not use C, that is the question:
Wheter 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The flags and warnings of a rude compiler,
Or to take arms agains a sea of errors,
And by debugging, fix them? To code, to hack,
No more; and by a hack to say we end
The type-check and the thousand other checks
Pascal is heir to, 'tis a compilation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To code, to hack;
To hack! perchanse to test: ay, there's the rub;
For in that hacker's bliss what bugs may come,
When we have written out this awful code,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes development of such long life.

-- Wes Munsil

(I've taken this nice piece from Richard Levitte's journal)

2 comments:

yzt said...

I like the poem! But I think it's too hard on C! It's the best programming language in the world, and I love the compiler. A rude compiler would be the C++ compilers!

bme said...

Well, I can't really comment on that, since I know neither C nor C++ compilers to such an extend to make comments. I only have feelings for them; to me, C is the old wizard with all the wisdom but static and rigid and caught in the antique ways as old fellows are, while C++ is the younger fellow with the new ambitions and new ways of managing things, yet quite classy and keeping a firm royalty to it's great and wise old fellow and preserving the old traditions.