[geeks] Misuse of Java

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, Greg A. Woods wrote:

> I would add that C really is very easy to learn if the way you learned
> to program computers started with the bare hardware.

I'd like to weigh in here and say that, for once, I wholeheartedly agree
with you.  The notion of computer languages that "think like people do"
as opposed to just abstracting over the hardware is fine for toy
problems (or -really- abstract things, like Mathematica) but is an utter
brain-drain for application development.  The damage is becoming quite
evident (or do I just have the luck of fixing -really- crappy code)?

> I think it depends on what you consider to be "bad C code".  I see
> enormous great jiggling gooey gobs of bad C code everywhere I look.

My current pet peeve is the intermixing types of different sizes
(specifically int and (void *)).  Does GCC simply not throw a warning
at this, or does no one actually read compiler warnings anymore?  If you
want a pointer, declare a pointer!

> Further many of the things I consider "bad" in common C code would
> probably be harder to do quite so badly in Java

That's very true and was, in fact, a design goal.  However, there are
-plenty- of ways to write crap code in Java, or any languge.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke
  "Albert Einstein nailed space-time, but the wild thing had him stumped.
   Al, baby, two and two make five-and-a-quarter; that's why people fall
   in love." -- Thomas Dolby, "That's Why People Fall in Love"