[wellylug]The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills

[Cliff Pratt]

Bruce Hoult wrote:
> On 7/10/07, Mian Lin <armislin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi , I just read the article from computerworld website,it listed "The
>> top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills". I am surprised at "C
>> programming" is on the list.
>>
>> what do you think, the people who are working in the industry ?
> 
> It's utter crap.
> 
> Feel free to check back and wave this in my face when we get to the
> old folk's home, but I fully expect C to still be widely used when
> almost everything else we use today (except Lisp) are dead and
> forgotten.
> 
> Why?  Because it has most of the power of assembly language, along
> with all the safety of assembly language, while lightening the mental
> load of programming considerably compared to assembly language.  And
> it's more or less portable.
> 
> C won't disappear until CPUs stop trying to look as if they run one
> instruction at a time, in sequence.  At which point almost every
> supposed C replacement language touted today (C++/ Java/ C#/ Perl/
> Python/ Ruby/ JavaScript) becomes equally irrelevant.  At that point
> we need something wildly different, not just surface different.
> Prolog or Haskell, for example, or something not yet thought of.
> 
You are comparing apples and oranges. Just as C won't disappear, neither 
will the C++/Java/C# triumvirate. Not will Perl, which deserves a fruit 
of its own with varieties called Python and Ruby. They all have their 
specific niches. However, C is likely to get more and more nichier and 
the others more mainstream.

Cheers,

Cliff