Talk:C

That such statements like "C is fast" or "C is highly portable" are misleading should be obvious to most programmers. I can write highly unportable and very slow C code - don't dare me! ;)

And then there was this statement:

• Lack of classes makes it hard to do an object-oriented design, limiting project flexibility (so you have to plan ahead)

The author claims that OOD automatically makes a project "flexible" and that non-OOD based projects have to "plan ahead". I see no proof for this statement. I use C and I never had to rewrite, unlike many developers who use OOP languages and I didn't "plan ahead" for sure. The often claimed superiority of OOP is unproven, especially as far as roguelikes are concerned because not one of the major RLs is based on real OOP. I don't want to say that procedural programming is superior, in fact maybe OOP is indeed superiour but please don't write such stuff here until its proven.

In general I ask everyone to avoid "language wars" in these articles. If editors claim that "lack of OOP support" is a "Con" some functional programming zealots might start adding "lack of real FP" to all languages. Know what I mean? --Copx 17:26, 8 Oct 2005 (CEST)

I wrote the original article. Most of your edits are fine, but I think some of them are obfustication. "C is fast" is a good take-away point. You replaced that with several sentences that amount to the same thing. In general I agree that more information is better than less - but it's good to boil things down to talking points the Pro/Con bullet list, is it not?

Your changes also de-emphasize some rather critical points I made about C, namely the lack of native GC. This is an important point for practical RL dev, IMHO.

OOP vs. procedural programming is a side issue and perhaps is best addressed in a separate article.

I think some of my points regarding C's lack of modern language features are valid and of practical concern for RL devs and should be re-instated.

I approached this article as writing a practical guide for RL devs. Anyone interesting in C as a language in and of itself will always be better served by wikipedia, where a lot of the concerns you raise are answered.

[[User:Shedletsky|–John Shedletsky^Talk ]] 00:26, 9 Oct 2005 (CEST)