Re: A petition to J3 apropos FORTRAN's future

From: James Giles (jamesgiles_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 03/17/04 

Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 21:35:19 GMT

Dr Chaos wrote:
...
> C had structures. You could make linked lists which looked
> like they were from the the textbooks. You could make trees.

This particular argument always bothers me. The textbook
writers were in need of some simple examples to demonstrate
the basic properties of pointers. They chose lists and trees
as simple things that students could understand so that they
could concentrate on the purpose of the lesson: teaching
the properties of pointers.

However, it is *not* a good idea to implement lists or trees
with the naive textbook style! In fact, that's almost always one
of the worst approaches you can take. The textbook had a
specific purpose: teaching pointers. The programmer has
a different purpose: using lists or trees. The textbooks
didn't teach that second purpose. 

-- 
J. Giles

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