The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0, 24 Jul 1996 by Various
page 103 of 773 (13%)
page 103 of 773 (13%)
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{C++}, there was a humorous debate over whether C's successor
should be named `D' or `P'. C became immensely popular outside Bell Labs after about 1980 and is now the dominant language in systems and microcomputer applications programming. See also {languages of choice}, {indent style}. C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain varying according to the speaker, as "a language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language". :C Programmer's Disease: /n./ The tendency of the undisciplined C programmer to set arbitrary but supposedly generous static limits on table sizes (defined, if you're lucky, by constants in header files) rather than taking the trouble to do proper dynamic storage allocation. If an application user later needs to put 68 elements into a table of size 50, the afflicted programmer reasons that he or she can easily reset the table size to 68 (or even as much as 70, to allow for future expansion) and recompile. This gives the programmer the comfortable feeling of having made the effort to satisfy the user's (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the user multiple opportunities to explore the marvelous consequences of {fandango on core}. In severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot comprehend why each fix of this kind seems only to further disgruntle the user. :C++: /C'-pluhs-pluhs/ /n./ Designed by Bjarne Stroustrup of AT&T Bell Labs as a successor to {C}. Now one of the {languages of choice}, although many hackers still grumble that |
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