EDSAC on your desk.

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Mon Sep 21 11:31:02 1998

> >True, but C itself if far from portable. The endless maze of #ifdef's
> >that are necessary to make a piece of source code portable among a limited
> >set of machines and OS's are fine and dandy unless you have to support all
> >those different permutations!

Well, that is what sizeof() and #ifdef are for! Liberal use of them!

> Straight ANSI C must be the most portable language for contemporary
> computers. Java is written in it. :-) C++ is another matter, it still
> has too many flavors. Depending on the app, portability can be a great
> hassle (if you expect portable GUIs) or a non-concern (in command-line,
> text-based apps).

C++ is also a bit portable, if you stay away from all of the object crap
(geeks gone bananas).

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Mon Sep 21 1998 - 11:31:02 BST