"John A. De Goes"
Are you saying has been no progress since K&R C in the number of libraries available to C programmers?
I never did, I asked you to compare usability. If you want it in plain English, library semantics still suck, hell, there isn't even name spacing.
And that C programmers still have to edit files with vi and compile and link by specifying all files on the command-line?
No, we still use some kind of make, and, believe it or not, I've written myself an omakefile that allows you to compile C with the same ease as ghc --make compiles Haskell. It makes many assumptions about the usage of imports, though: Such power will always be hackish in C-land. I am offended by the demeaning way you portray vi.
You may disagree, but the evidence points in the opposite direction. There are tens of thousands of robust C libraries available to suit any particular programming need. Many of Haskell's own libraries are based on C versions.
Semantic suckage tends to collect around those libraries that aren't pure Haskell, XHB has proven itself able to crash a _very_ mature piece of C software, the X server. You won't have to search long for security advisories exposing flaws in virtually every of those libraries, usually caused by fundamental flaws of the language. Your point?
Tool support for the C language (not for some successor you might think would exist if the language continued evolving) can detect memory leaks, detect memory overwrites, apply dozens of automatic refactorings to C large-scale C programs, etc.
Hacks, as I said. None of them are able to address the fundamental problems.
Library and tool support for the C language is light years beyond Haskell. It wouldn't be there if we had been through 20 iterations of C each completely breaking backward compatibility.
It wouldn't be there if C was younger than Haskell, either, but still suck the same. -- (c) this sig last receiving data processing entity. Inspect headers for copyright history. All rights reserved. Copying, hiring, renting, performance and/or quoting of this signature prohibited.