*BSD News Article 68638


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From: brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk (Brian Somers)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc
Subject: Re: How to delete files within C programs
Followup-To: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc
Date: 15 May 1996 13:59:57 +0100
Organization: Coverform Ltd.
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Distribution: world
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References: <Oum-El-Kheir.Benkahla-3004961724540001@mac-ugm-3.imag.fr> <4mv7jj$fl7@innocence.interface-business.de> <4mvdoj$6e2@news.rhrz.uni-bonn.de>
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Henry G. Juengst (juengst@saph1.physik.uni-bonn.de) wrote:

: In article <4mv7jj$fl7@innocence.interface-business.de>, j@ida.interface-business.de (J Wunsch) writes:
: >juengst@saph1.physik.uni-bonn.de (Henry G. Juengst) wrote:
: >
: >> Evidently you have no real experiences with OpenVMS. Please, send
: >> your babbling to comp.os.vms.
: >
: >You've been the one who started all this babbling here -- and not in a
: >VMS group.  If you don't like Unix, don't use it.  Put VMS onto your
: >PC if you like it better...

: Peter started the VMS thread. I want to stop it in this group. But
: that does mean I will accept wrong and unclear statements about VMS
: in this group.

: VMS does not exist for PCs, I am afraid. I have a PC at home with NetBSD
: to play with unix. I wouldn't say that everything is too bad in unix,
: but I would use VMS if it would exist for PCs. I am missing the order,
: hierachy and nice software development tools of VMS there. May be I
: will buy my own AXP later.

: The point at the beginning was, that I think the names 'unlink' and 'remove'
: are meaningless and unclear for beginners. This is the case for most
: identifier in unix/C. Therefore unix and C are no good environment for
: beginners. A good book might help, but that does not make it much
: better (of course, that depends on the person).

That depends on your viewpoint.  I began programming with basic, then went
onto assembler (manually assembled mneumonics), then to C, then to C++.

Basic didn't give me the ability to do anything interresting.  Machine
code was tedious but did everything.

My argument is that although there is a high learning curve to C (and even
more to assembler), the student gets a complete understanding of what they
are actually doing.  With High level languages - including the likes of
Visual C++, Visual Basic, Delphi etc, the programmer is productive, but
fails to understand what's going on.

Learn C, learn assembler, THEN - and only after you can write a program
of at least a few hundred lines - THEN learn to use something that's
as productive as you can afford.  Bear in mind, the more productive the
language, the more downfalls.  If I write SQL, I can't write my own
"amount" type that supports the sorts of things I expect it to.  I execute
queries that do vast amounts of unnecessary work.  If I write C code, it
does exactly what I want but it takes comparatively enormous amounts of time
to develop.

Learn how it all works, then make an educated decision as to what level you
wish to program.

: >
: >-- 
: >J"org Wunsch					       Unix support engineer
: >joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de       http://www.interface-business.de/~j

: Henry

: --
: juengst@saph1.physik.uni-bonn.de         [131.220.161.1]  (Internet)
: omni:.de.uni-bonn.physik.saph1::juengst                   (DECnet/OSI, phase V)
: saph1::juengst                           [26.358]         (DECnet, phase IV)

: Any opinions in this mail are my own.

--
Brian <brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk>
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour....