Hi, Anton Shepelev!
I read your message from 19.12.2018 01:16

 AK>> C has already died.
 AS> The rumours of its death are greatly exagerrated. It is one of the
 AS> most used languages with nary an alternative for embedded systems.
 AS> Some major PC projects are developed in C: GIMP, DarkTable, Git,
 AS> NetPBM (for which I have written several tools).

Probably these products were born long and long ago.

 AK>> It is too obsolete to be in use.
 AS> Why? Although Modula and Pascal are much better languages, they are
 AS> not nearly as popular...

C++ is not a language for common people. It a language for writing big quick,
complex systems. In this area C is ten times closer to vulgar Basic than to
C++.

 AK>> C++ has replaced it.

 AS> C++ cannot replace C because it is a totally different language
 AS> with an opposite ideology. C is a small, simple and minimalistic
 AS> procedural language, whereas C++ is a huge, heavy and bloated
 AS> object-oriented and multi-paradigm monster.

C is just an ancient programming language and now nobody, in a sober mind, will
 make programs using it. Because it is just a bad form. C is used by two
reasons: you program a small controller and there is no C++ compiler available.
 The second reason is when you are very old, you have a big ancient working
system, written in C, and there is no reason to touch it. The main reason for
such tired people is "don't touch it if it works" ;=)

C++ is a bright, logical continuation of C, developed by the best minds of the
world of the system programming. C++ incorporates novelties that allow you to
make much more complex, powerful and reliable programs than the ones written in
 C. I repeat, that if a programmer has a choice he will never trade C++ for C.
It is nonsense.

 AK>> The matter IMHO is that the assignment operator "=" is the most
 AK>> frequent operator in C++.
 AS> Seems true.
 AK>> So it is was a sound idea to make it so short.

 AS> I think that disciplied programmers have long ago agreed that
 AS> readability is preferable to the utter paranoid brevity, so that
 AS> the atoi() function would be better named as strtoint(), for
 AS> example.

It is a question what is more clear: "atoi" or StrToInt. IMHO, the second
variant is more clear. Besides, C++ has many other elegant methods for similar
tasks. For instance, you can make "=" operator for any data type you use.

 AS> Code is read much more frequently than it is modified, and
 AS> modification itself requires extensive reading.
 AK>> Besides, ": =b" looks like a fidonet smiley with the tongue out of
 AK>> the mouth.: =b

 AS> Do not cramp the operator and operands together, use whitespace,
 AS> e.g.: a: = b;

Well, between a mouth and nose there is some space, indeed. := }

Bye, Anton!
Alexander Koryagin
english_tutor 2018

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