On 23 Feb 2004 at 9:02, Carl Peto wrote:
From: "Carl Peto"
At the risk of starting a flame war (please, no flames on this excellent list!)...
Does anyone know if there are good technical reasons why C was used to program the Linux kernel rather than C++ or one of the more modern OO languages? Surely the reuse inherent in OO would improve solid reuse and so shorten testing times as OO does when used well elsewhere in the programming world?
Stop right there before you start a religious war! There are many reasons why people prefer different languages, not only because of the facilities that the languages offer, but because some languages fit that person's mindset better than others. I've programmed for many years in both C and C++, and I've also programmed in Fortran IV, Forth, Pascal, Delphi, a little Python and even Basic. I prefer C++, because I think it's more expressive and less error prone, but I see nothing wrong in programming in C or any other language. Good progamming transcend the specific language you are using - I've seen spaghetti code programmed in Pascal. Far important than arguing about what language, is to learn programming skills - how to design programs, data structures and algorithms. Once you have that skill you can choose the most appropriate language and pick up its essentials relatively rapidly. alan -- http://www.ibgames.net/alan Registered Linux user #6822 http://counter.li.org Winding Down - Weekly Tech Newsletter - subscribe at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/mailing.html