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In <> Clint Olsen <> writes:

>I certainly think so, but I'm sort of wondering if people are content
>enough with C that they'd never switch, even if a compelling alternative
>existed.

I doubt that there are many competent C programmers that insist on using
C where a compelling alternative exists. C is one tool in the
programmer's toolkit and I doubt that there is another tool that could
replace it. But a competent programmer's toolkit should contain more than
one tool.

>And even a technically superior alternative doesn't mean anything
>- as someone else mentioned the x86 arch as a perfect example.

It's actually a bad example. The only objective metrics for the merits
of a general purpose computer architecture are the performance and
price-performance ratio of its implementations. And the x86 architecture
does remarkably well on both of them.

But, as far as I can tell, the technically superior alternative to C, has
yet to materialise. Well, for many people, it exists as GNU C.

Dan
--
Dan Pop
DESY Zeuthen, RZ group
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