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The New C Standard

Posted by Zonk on from the meet-the-new-boss dept.

derek_farn writes "At a very late stage Addison Wesley decided not to publish my book, 'The New C Standard: An economic and cultural commentary'. Now that the copyright issues have been sorted out I am making the pdf freely available. You can download the pdf (mirror 1). The organization is rather unusual in that the commentary covers each sentence of the C Standard (actually the latest draft of C0X, excluding library) one by one (all 2022 of them). One major new angle is using the results from studies in cognitive psychology to try and figure out how developers comprehend code. The aim being to try and produce some coding guidelines that reduce costs (ie, reduce the time needed and bugs created). The book also contains the results of lots of measurements (over 400 figures and tables) in an attempt to back the arguments being made -- another unusual feature since most software related books don't publish any figures to back up what they say. Other subsections discuss common implementations and differences between the latest draft standard and C90/C++. More background on the project is available from the Inquirer.

7 of 400 comments (clear)

  1. Why would you use this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    C is over with already, geez. Slow, cumbersome, and nobody has a compiler for it. You should be switching to Java by now. It's fast, portable, and the JVM is everywhere. The Novell JVM is the fastest. Dennis Ritchie's time is past. Let the dinosaur turn into oil already and upgrade to the technology that will take us into the 22nd century and beyond. JAVA!

    1. Re:Why would you use this? by satan666 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Puh-leaze! Java-this and Java-that. Why not use a language that is designed for speed: COBOL

  2. 1616 by mnemonic_ · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's the number of the beast multiplied by 2.426! Incredible!

  3. I'm waiting for D by winkydink · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't think this C-thing is going to catch on. :)

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

  4. C0X by zephc · · Score: 4, Funny

    It seems that some men love C0X, but most men want nothing to do with C0X. The men that like C0X say there's nothing like the feel of the thick C0X standard in your hands.

    --
    "I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
  5. Not Again... by uberdave · · Score: 5, Funny

    No. This is obviously the NEW C standard they've been talking about. I haven't read the article, but clearly they've loosend up on punctuation. Also, any comparisons to directives starting with MAX must automatically default to a "less than" comparison.

    --
    "I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
  6. Now that the copyright issues have been sorted out by Trinition · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now that the copyright issues have been sorted out...

    As I was reading this sentence, my heart stopped and my mind jumped for joy. I thought the RIAA/MPAA/etc. had finally given up, congress had rolled back copyright terms, and the GPL was finally successfully tested in court.

    Then I read the rest... *sigh* oh well.