"Walter B. Rader" wrote:
> 
> However, C and C++ are extremely portable, which is very
> appealing to me.

Sorry, I cannot resist commenting on that particular statement, because
it still seems to be such a frighteningly common misconception.

This statement confuses two issues: portability and availability. C
certainly is available on pretty much every system. But this says
nothing about portability of C code - C and C++ are definitely among the
least portable languages in use today. There effectively is no
non-trivial C program that is portable according to the language
standard (ie. does not explore undefined/unspecified behaviour one way
or the other - most times you are not even aware).

This is in stark contrast to high-level languages like OCaml, which are
clearly not as widely available, but which have mostly
system-independent and fully specified semantics[*]. So portability
rates very high.

Best regards,

	- Andreas

[*] Not completely true for OCaml - consider eg. evaluation order - but
still a vanishingly small issue compared to C.

-- 
Andreas Rossberg, rossberg@ps.uni-sb.de

"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac Man affected us
 as kids, we would all be running around in darkened rooms, munching
 magic pills, and listening to repetitive electronic music."
 - Kristian Wilson, Nintendo Inc.
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