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Subject: Re: Why do people like C? (Was: Comparison: Beta - Lisp)
References: <os2Psc1w165w@sytex.com> <35dcf9$jao@news.aero.org> <1994Sep19.221325.3567@cabell.vcu.edu> <CwFxAA.M34@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
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Date: Wed, 21 Sep 1994 16:24:32 +0000
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In article <CwFxAA.M34@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk "Jeff Dalton" writes:

> >I must strenously disagree with the original poster.  "Blazing
> >speed,space,etc." are that critical. 
> 
> Then why are so many things so large and slow?  Sure, there are
> some cases where speed, space, etc are critical, but there must
> be many others where they aren't.  I think you are right to an
> extent, but it can't be the whole story.

The problem is that real Lisp system don't compete well with
C/C++ systems. It doesn't matter that they _could_, it only
matters that they don't do it well enough. I blame it on byte
counting, but that doesn't help much.

> A strange thing is that it sometimes looks like only success in the
> PC market counts at all.  The PC market is a rather odd place.

I agree. (Oh no, not again! (-; ) It's the market that gets the
highest publicity. I have a friend who regularly slags off the
Mac, which is a machine he doesn't use. It may not be #1 on the
list of popular machines, but it's _there_. He doesn't see it
that way, of course. He has a nasty habit of attending those
multimedia events that Microsoft like to organise, esp when
Bill Gates makes an appearance.

Just blame the media and strong marketing. :-)

> The OS technology would have been laughed out of town in the 70s.
> And yet people put up with 640K restrictions, no virtual memory,
> no proper multi-tasking, etc, for ages.  I think it's reasonable
> that someone might not have predicted that things would develop
> the way they did in the PC market, much less that the PC market
> would start to dominate other markets (at least so far as
> perception of success is concerned).

Someone has a wonderful quote in their sigfile:

"640K outta be enough for  anyone" -- Bill Gates.

No. You can never have enough memory. It's obvious why. At
the very least, they'll want to sell you software with more
features, and features eat memory. Microsoft have been very
good to people who make RAM chips...

> Moreover, I think it's surprising that _any_ language has so
> dominant a position.

Agreed. "There can only be one." Once it is there, why should it
change? Think about when it changed, and why. For micros, it was
when we switched from 8 bit machines to 16 bit. I used a C compiler
on an 8bit machine, but then, I was odd like that. I didn't hear
about C being used to write best selling apps until much later.

Martin Rodgers
-- 
Future generations are relying on us
It's a world we've made - Incubus	
We're living on a knife edge, looking for the ground -- Hawkwind
