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

[nic]

Cliff Pratt wrote:
> 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. 
I can't resist this ungodly blasphemy. putting the unsaved Perl in the same fruit basket 
as the godly python and its acolyte Ruby. Heresy!!!!

They all have their
> specific niches. However, C is likely to get more and more nichier and 
> the others more mainstream.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Cliff
> 
>