Re: Dead Batteries

[Lorenzo Donati <lorenzodonatibz@...>]

On 05/01/2020 17:15, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo wrote:
> > On a related note, many years ago I read something about the success of
> > C (I can't recall exactly where or who wrote it, but it wasn't a
> > uninfluential author, IIRC).
>
> Perhaps this?
>
> Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language
> by Brian W. Kernighan
> https://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html
Thanks Luiz, very interesting reading!

Although some of the content resounded with my brain, I'm almost sure I 
had never read it before.

It is quite an old article, and the one I remember vaguely was something 
perhaps shorter and a bit more recent. I'm rather sure it was something 
written in the 90s, when many successful implementations of Pascal were 
widespread.

I suspect the author did actually read the article from Kerninghan, 
since some of the ideas are in this latter's article as well (bad I/O 
model of Pascal, ability of separate compilation of C).

But I also remember the author stressed that one of the key point of C 
success was the availability of a standardized library that was 
separated from the the core language (in particular the I/O facilities).

I might have read it around 2002/2003, when I was attending a PhD course 
in SW engineering that I never completed. But I'm not sure.

Thanks anyway.

-- Lorenzo