Third public review of X3J11 C

[Joseph Reger]

In article <4203 at adobe.COM> burgett at steel.UUCP (Michael Burgett) writes:
>These discussions about the flaws of the C language in dealing with complex
>floating point ops, and the *failure* of X3J11 to solicit input and rectify
>these things are getting _old_....
>
>1) C is not now, has not been in the past, and (hopefully) will not be in
>the future, a lanugage designed for writing scientific applications
>.....
>In light of 1 & 2... where's the beef?  C is doing what it is designed to do,
>and from what I've seen of the ANSI standard, will continue to do so.  My hat
>off to the committee for not bowing to public pressure to try to make C all
>things to all people (can you say PL/1... I knew you could.)
>
>	mike burgett		burgett!adobe at decwrl.dec.com
>
>"my intellectual work belongs to my employer, but my flames are my own..."
                                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And they are nothing to be proud of! Mr. burgett sounds  like  if
he  had  had  invented the language C, and as if he were the only
authority to decide just who is permitted to use it.  The  humble
proposition was to make a _few_ changes that would _not_ make the
language more complex, or bigger or more difficult  to  implement
or whatever the usual "arguments" against these are. I am pulling
out from this debate now and just would like to comment  that  it
is  ending  yet another time where it sadly usually does: "Scien-
tist go home, you buggers program in YOUR language not in OURS."

I thank all of you who sent me e-mail  on  this  topic  (none  of
which was like Mr. burgett's above piece). I will continue to use
C as long as the standard does not require  the  implementors  to
code  special  "Scientific  Application Detectors" (SAD) into it,
which would produce erroneous code if the  probability  of scien-
tific use exceeds a certain value.

Joseph D. Reger,	joseph at chromo.ucsc.edu