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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Atanamir (talk | contribs) at 08:10, 7 September 2006 (moved Talk:Oberon programming language to Talk:Oberon (programming language): new NC). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Problems with the current aricle -- long list

I don't have the information to correct this, but

"It also offers an interesting feature which is only recently becoming available in more prominent development systems: exportability of procedures. Imagine that for some program you create a PNG viewer procedure and that you export it: any program on the system will be able to view PNG files merely by calling the viewer! That's true reusability."

is bogus. Code libraries predate Fortran, and shared libraries date back to or before MTS and the late 1960s. CORBA and things like it do this too. I'm sure there's something mildly unique, but I don't know exactly what it is. Likewise,

"The code will be both smaller than that in nearly all other programming languages..."

leaves me sceptical; it sounds like ad copy instead of an accurate statement. Oberon is in the same family as Modula-3, Ada, Pascal, and Java, and more distantly C, so it's not going to produce a huge difference in code size. Perl, Mathematica and APL will blow away any of the above languages in the right problem domain.

"...(mistakes will be less easily lost in a forest of detail)"

Which doesn't follow from the statement it's parenthetical to. Languages that add the detail of a variable definition for every variable save people from many mistakes that were made in Fortran. APL and Perl are both known for small code, and both are known for being hard to read.

"less opaque (fewer language 'features' mean less chance of confusing/misusing them)"

Love the scare quotes around features. How does removing enumerations and forcing people to use integer constants make things less opaque? In general, you have language features because otherwise you have to write a lot of code to emulate them, or because it's more efficent to have the compiler handle it. I had a professor who would honestly argue that programmers should just use a Fortran with extra features added until everyone was happy. Whether or not Wirth's minimalist strategy is good is still being debated, but the average programmer uses a programming language more complex than Oberon, and frequently much more complex than Oberon (C++, Perl, Common Lisp, Fortran 95).

"less subject to error problems from data typing problems"

C programmers might point out that strict data typing like Oberon has is a pain and can add to a lot of type changing, from integer to float, for example, and even worse if you want to start bitwiddling character input. An Ada programmer, like me, would point out that in exchange for that pain, you catch a lot of errors; but Oberon doesn't catch nearly as many errors as it can, and is less portable than it should be, because it doesn't include enumerations and ranges that catch errors and avoid depending on an implementation specific integer type.

This presents Oberon as the perfect language, and doesn't include any concept that it's not, that the design principles may have tradeoffs. This is not unique: Ada programming language doesn't include much discussion about the tradeoffs either, but mentions the features as facts, instead of saying how much better it is than "almost every other language". (comment by user:Prosfilaes, May 2004)

Sure it's enthusiastic. But worrying about POV is not needed.

The article is enthusiastic. There is evidence that simpler languages have greater reliability. The above comments are all true. Calling an enthusiastic article NPOV seems overreacting. The article could be more encyclopedic by incorporating the comparisons noted above into the article. Kd4ttc 19:57, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

If in the article on Christanity that "Christians were better people than non-Christians", that would slapped down instantly as NPOV. Writing that "Oberon programs are also less likely to be buggy" is no less NPOV, even if it brings up less emotional responses.
I've read about studies to prove that Ada is less buggy than C and C++, but I'm not going to add "Ada programs are also less likely to be buggy" to the Ada programming language page. If I was interested in doing so, I'd have to make it clear the details of the studys, which might give me the right to say that, in many cases, it appears that Ada can have a significantly lower defect rate than C and C++. If studies were made comparing Oberon and other languages, they need to be cited, and then you can say that in the instances of the studies Oberon performed better than the other languages studied.
I can't incorporate my corrections into the article, because I don't even know what it's talking about frequently. --Prosfilaes 08:31, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Religion and politics get the strongest response so discussions on Mac vs Windows sure get exciting! (Politically incorrect comments on (delete groups) deleted) Wikins seem to be very tolerant. I think the comment on studies regarding correctness of programs would be very useful in Ada. The article on Eiffel could benefit there as well, with the interesting observation that commercial success seems inversely related to how clean the programs are, and that commercial success measures only sales of compilers, not utility of languages. The studies that discussed what goes into creating a reliable language seem to have been lost on a whole generation of programmers. Lucky grad students in the future, who can rediscover all those studies. Me: I'm just an old fart medical doctor. Not up to date on the studies we've discussed obliquely. I'd like to see the Algol families come back. I get ill just looking at C code. At least I'm in good company with Dijkstra feeling the same way. Once a port of something like Pascal, Oberon, or Modula port to Mac OS and is tightly integrated in the IDE I'll get entusiasm for programming again. Till then PHP, mySQL, and Apache will have to do. Kd4ttc 01:36, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Libraries versus features

"It has likewise been argued, failure to include a feature may force the programmer to reimplement the feature in his code, causing many people to code the same algorithms, frequently with bugs or inefficently; however, this ignores the concept of libraries. Java is an example of a simple-enough language surrounded by an enormously rich class library."

First place, it's beside the point; Oberon does not have the rich class library. Second place, it's overstating your point; libraries have different strengths than features. There's no enumeration library that's going to do the compile-time checking and clarity and succinty of built-in enumerations. You can't provide templates in a library, either, and emulated templates aren't as type-safe as the real thing. Likewise, libraries don't give compilers as much information as features do; compilers will frequently give awful error messages with the STL because they're seeing the inside of the template rather than the feature.

Also, are you still a simple language if you have a Java-sized standard library? Implementations still have a long row to how, and it's not like it's any easier or less required to learn about a feature if it's stuck away in a library. --Prosfilaes 12:19, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Smaller=Faster -- not necessarily

I'm posting to the talk page so maybe we can discuss a consensus, instead of back and forth changes.

"Oberon code is typically smaller, and so faster, than equivalent code in many other languages."

Is bullshit. It is absurd to say that Oberon code is typically smaller if you don't specify languages and projects. Likewise, smaller doesn't mean faster. In Code Complete, Steve McConnell shows several functions in C to calculate the integer log base 2 of an integer; the fastest function is the longest.

Or let's look at Hello, World. 

10 print "Hello, world"

echo Hello, world

#include <stdio.h>
int main (void) {
  printf ("Hello, world\n");
}

MODULE HelloWorld;
IMPORT Out;
BEGIN
  Out.String("Hello World!");
  Out.Ln;
END HelloWorld;

Gee, Oberon produces the most code. Do you really think that means that the code will be slowest?

I suspect the thought here was object code (or machine code depending on the compiler) as opposed to source text. The Wirthian languages do tend to use actual words instead of one character symbols (or an implicit invocation) for such things as variable typing and such. Thus I suspect the strongly felt comment immediately above is skew to the intent of the article text. ww 20:27, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
How much object code is produced is completely compiler-dependent. Also, I don't read that and think "object code". I think source code. In any case, before it is put back in in any form, I'd like to see some evidence that it's correct. Even smaller object code doesn't always imply faster code.--Prosfilaes 04:33, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Slim Binaries

Should slim binaries (roughly: dictionary encoded abstract syntax tree of code) get mentioned in the article? See [1] for a little further info on slim binaries. Zarutian 01:06, 22 june 2005 (UTC)

Bad link there. The argument seems to be something along these, not so explicit, lines. Snmall binaries have, all other things being equal, have fewer interdependencies and so lower complication and so fewer opportunities for bugs. Well, not intended ones anyway. Which is the general Wirthian point. True, it's possible to have slim binaries which have pathologically interconnected everything, but that's the situation several sigmas out, the unlikely case. After all, not even close to all C programs qualify for the Obfuscated contest.
It's a fair comment to make in WP, though hard to quite explain clearly. With all the refs and such WP tries to insist on. It's a craftsmanlike point, and equally hard to understand. In Pirsig's terms, it's a kind of 'quality'. That took a writer of Pirsig's quality to describe, I don't have such hopes of my own prose... ww 16:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to Merge

I've proposed that the Oberon-2 article should be merged into this one. My reasons are --

  • Oberon-1 was never really much used, and needs only to be mentioned as a historical curiosity
  • Oberon-2 is usually called just "Oberon"
  • similarly, several articles that ought to link to Oberon-2 are actually linked to this one
  • most of the available documentation and implementations are for Oberon-2
  • the features that keep Oberon alive only really began with Oberon-2

If you look at the Oberon-2 article, you'll see it's quite short, because once you've discussed Oberon-1, there's not much more to say about it. So, without any negative feelings towards Oberon-1 or -2, I think these two articles should merge; and the Oberon-1 article is larger and better linked into Wikipedia.

What do you guys think?

OrangUtanUK 13:23, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense to me. RainbowCrane 15:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good suggestion - assuming that it is set up so that anybody looking for information on 'Oberon-2' ends up directly in the right place in Wikipedia. Chris Burrows 23:58, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move

Oberon programming language → Oberon (programming language) – Conformance with WP naming conventions atanamir

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was move as outlined. -- tariqabjotu 02:43, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This poll has been transcluded onto the talk pages of a number of individual programming languages, but is in fact a subpage of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Programming languages. When you comment, please note that this survey is for multiple programming languages, not just the one you saw it on.

Some editors have proposed a general rename of articles named with the pattern "FOO programming language" to the pattern "FOO (programming language)". Please note that this poll only is applicable to those programming languages whose names alone would introduce ambiguity. For example, programming languages such as Java and C , whose names alone are ambiguous, would be at Java (programming language) and C (programming language), respectively. Unique names such as Fortran and COBOL, should remain at their respective simple names.

For instructions on how to add a poll participation request to additional applicable article talk pages, please see: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Programming languages#Poll procedure

Please add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by an optional brief explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

Voting

  • Abstain Support - I initially abstained because I just wanted to get a procedure rolling. Looking at the first few comment, I support the rename. As with other editor, I only want this where ambiguity exists in the name: e.g. for "Python" but not for "Perl". Also, something like "Python programming language" would still redirect to "Python (programming language)" under the proposal, so existing links would not break. LotLE×talk 22:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - However, I would object to specifying "programming language" anywhere in the title, as parenthetic remark or not, if the name of the language itself does not have any ambiguity issues. For example C programming language should change to C (programming language) (since C is already taken), but Fortran should stay at Fortran. --Serge 23:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - originator of the request; it would also meet the common names policy and also meet the disambiguation guideline. atanamir 23:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The convention has been "<name of language> programming language" for quite a while and I don't think it helps by changing it now. There are already redirects in place for "<name> (programming language)" and it would only add more work to move them all there. Also, it goes against conventions in other media. In books related to programming on the copyright page where it sometimes has sorting information for the book many books say "Computers & Internet - <name> programming language I. Title" or something similar. - DNewhall 23:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. To quote Wikipedia:Disambiguation, "When there is another word (such as Cheque instead of Check) or more complete name that is equally clear (such as Titan rocket), that should be used.". It is undeniable that the "C programming language" is a widely-understood name, not just a description. There's a reason K&R's book is called The C Programming Language rather than C, a Programming Language. Diverse examples from other areas include French language, Titan rocket, sticking plaster, bread roll, contract bridge. What makes programming languages different from these topics? Deco 23:44, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • If those articles were named like the programming languages are currently, they would have been something like sticking plaster dressing, bread roll food, and contract bridge card game. Titan rocket, in fact, is a redirect to Titan (rocket family). The natural languages are a slightly odd exception to the normal convention, but i'm not a linguist, and not about to argue with them. (I do know, however, that many non-English Wikipedias use the normal (parenthesized) disambiguation convention for natural languages.) --Piet Delport 13:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Apologies for the bad example - Titan rocket was moved since it turned out to be a rocket family, but others such as Angara rocket were not. The controlling question here is whether "C programming language" is a "more complete name" for C. I argue that it is, and so standing guidelines strongly support the current name. Deco 10:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I would argue that isn't. You can say "I play contract bridge" and "I use C", but not "I use C programming language". You can expand the names into noun phrases, as in "I play the contract bridge card game" and "I use the C programming language", but in both cases "the * card game" and "the * programming language" are not part of the name itself, anymore. --Piet Delport 06:04, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • The presence or absence of a leading article is not a reliable indicator of whether it's a name or not, as indicated by French language, unless you wish to expand this proposal to move X language -> X (language) as well. Deco 06:28, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
            • Definitely not something i'm interested in pursuing; let the linguists and editors involved with natural languages worry about their own naming convention. --Piet Delport 12:09, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
              • (I know I am commenting on a now old post, but...) My take on "French language" is that it's different from "C programming language" since French is the language of the French. However, "C" is not a language named after a culture, country, or people (or anything). "C" only refers to C; "French" refers to a whole lot more than a language. Also, "French" is descriptive, but "C" is not. There's no need to clarify "C" or let it modify a noun. But being that a one letter name for something is inherently ambiguous, as well as names such as "Java" or "Python" (as already mentioned), there needs to be the parenthetical, "(programming language)".
  • Support - due to its name being "Ruby". --Yath 01:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - this is the standard way that most Wikipedia articles are named. Use the common name and disambiguate appropriately using parentheses when necessary. --Polaron | Talk 01:43, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - For the same reasons as DNewhall. Chris Burrows 02:11, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose — Per Deco, I don't see how adding parentheses to an article title which is already clear is an improvement. --Craig Stuntz 02:47, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support -- Crypotography has had much the same problem for some time. It has adopted the "<topic> (cryptography)" approach which has worked well. Not elegant perhaps, but ... ww 05:20, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose — Either way, there should be a second link so that both "C (programming language)" and "C programming langage" produce the C article. My main reason for opposing is that it isn't really consistent with the new "C programming language, criticism" page that was spun off the main C article; what would that name turn into? By the way, the official standard name is "programming language C", but to me that sounds too much like "PL/C" which would be wrong. Deco's remark is quite right. — DAGwyn 07:56, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. This proposal is different from the original proposal, found here, which is now understood as having unanimous consensus in favour. Please do not interfere with the original proposition by misrepresenting it and opening a straw poll here, which can only serve to undermine the usefulness of the original proposal. It would have been much better to simply post a link. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The original proposal seems pretty wacko to me, and I don't see any evidence of a consensus. As I understand it, this current section is not a "straw poll", but a genuine attempt to determine whether or not to move the C article to a new name, independently of whether that wacko proposal is accepted. — DAGwyn 09:53, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In what way is "C programming language" misleading? I can't think of a more natural title for such an article. — DAGwyn 05:48, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Response to DNewhall's comment

In order to reduce clutter in the voting section, i've deicded to respond to DNewhall's vote here. If you're afraid of the amount of work it would take to move the articles, I can move most of them and i'm sure there are other editors willing to take up the task. Also, most books about programming languages simply have the title or common name of the programming language as the title of the book -- the Wrox series uses "Professional PHP" or "professional Java", not "professional PHP programming language" or "professional Java programming langauge". Many of the books I have also have the sorting information as "Computers -- Programming languages -- X," where X is the programming language. atanamir 23:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The main issue is not that I'm afraid of the work but that it'll be a lot of work with next to no perceived benefit. Both "Euphoria programming language" and "Euphoria (programming language)" go to the same page and I (and others apparently) fail to see how that is an improvement over the current convention. The text is exactly the same, you're just adding parentheses. No one is going to get confused about the lack of parentheses (also remember that the names with parentheses already have redirects in place). Is "<name> (programming language)" a more correct title for the article? Arguably. Is it worth the effort of moving all the pages over from their perfectly understandable title to a title that already has a redirect in place for it? No. - DNewhall 16:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think you misunderstand the point of stylistic consistency on Wikipedia. Any one article in isolation would be fine under either convention; in fact, if the project was only the one article on, e.g. "C programming language" there would be no contrast with all the other uses of parens for disambiguation. But if WP (or some subset) was prepared for print or other syndication, having relatively consistent stylistic choices helps a lot (article naming is, of course, just one small issue among many others, of course). The work involved in a rename would, obviously, be a tiny fraction of the work involved in discussing the question, so that is "vanishingly insignificant". LotLE×talk 16:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When it comes to C, we need to clear and distinct names for the articles on the programming language article and for the book. C (programming language) and The C Programming Language (book) are those two names. They are unambiguous and (or is that because?) they conform with the Wikipedia standard. Anything else should be a redirect to one or disambig page to both. 'C programming language' should redirect to the language and 'C Programming Language' to the book or a disambig page. The existence of a book called 'The C Programming Language' is actually an argument in Support. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 12:49, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
... Appending to own comment ... It's never referred to directly as 'C programming language'. It's always 'C' or 'the C programming language. Note the ' the '. The latter is of the form 'the X Y' where X is the name and Y is the type of object. 'the X Y' (or even 'X Y') is not a new name for the object, simply a way to refer to X where there may be some ambiguity. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 13:07, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Repsonse to Deco's comment

Imagine if you have a set of objects which all fall under the same category -- let's say they're all different types of Widgets. The types are Alboo, Kabloo, Hello, Wawoob, Baboon, Choogoo, Chimpanzee, etc. Because some will cause ambiguity -- Hello, Baboon, and Chimpanzee -- they need to be disambiguated. However, since the common name (in this case, the real name) is "Hello," "Baboon," and "Chimpanzee," wikipedia has an established precedent of using parentheses. Thus, the unique widgets, Alboo, Kabloo, Wawoob, Coogoo, can have articles simply at the name itself; but the ambiguous names should have articles at Hello (widget), Baboon (widget), and Chimpanzee (widget). Thus, the article titles will be uniform in that they are all "at" the name itself, but with a disambiguator on several of them. This is easier than making all of the articles at Alboo widget, Kabloo widget, Hello widget, etc. Also, it allows for the pipe trick, so links can easily be made with [[Hello (widget)|]] --> Hello. atanamir 23:54, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • an example of this that's currently on wikipedia is colours. Some colours, such as Blue, Brown, and Red are at their articles, but colours like Orange (color) need the disambiguation part on them. It isn't at Orange color, althouh there is a redirect -- we can do the same thing with redirects. atanamir 23:57, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Titan rocket may now be a redirect, since it turned out to be a family of rockets rather than a single rocket, but there are still many rockets named that way (e.g. Angara rocket) and it's still cited on Wikipedia:Disambiguation specifically. The miniscule convenience of the pipe trick is not a reason for anything. My point is that this is a much wider concern than programming languages alone and represents a significant departure from the disambiguation guidelines. It would be radical to make such changes in a single area without raising them to the wider community, when your argument seems to apply to everything. The point of contract bridge and bread roll is that the more common names for these topics are "bridge" and "roll". Deco 07:48, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Simpler disambiguation

Even if we add the parentheses, the guideline at Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Specific topic makes sense to me:

If there is a choice between disambiguating with a generic class or with a context, choose whichever is simpler. Use the same disambiguating phrase for other topics within the same context.

For example, "(mythology)" rather than "(mythological figure)".

In this case, we could have the simpler and more widely applicable "(computing)" instead of the long "(programming language)". --TuukkaH 10:04, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the sentiment, but i think "(computing)" is too wide, with way too much opportunity for clashes:
"(programming language)" might lean towards the long side, but i don't think any alternative class comes close to being as simultaneously large, well-defined and well-populated. --Piet Delport 15:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that if we were to use parentheses, "(computing)" is not specific enough. Your examples are excellent, particularly "Icon", which clashes with an already-existing article! Deco 10:40, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you're right in that it's not specific enough. On the other hand, the disambiguation can never be perfect as there are several programming languages that share a name: NPL has three programming languages, The Language List has four programming languages called G. What about "(language)" then? --TuukkaH 22:02, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Language" connotes something rather different from "programming language". "Lisp (language)" for example. "Programming language" is the accepted category in the industry, abbreviated to "PL" quite often in discussions (whereas "L" is never used for this). — DAGwyn 05:59, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What about just "(programming)"? Or is that too ambiuguous as well? atanamir 02:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Pages like C programming language, criticism

To meet the new standard, the pages should be moved to something like Criticism of C (programming language), right? examples are Georgia (U.S. State) and Politics of Georgia (U.S. state). atanamir 02:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Depends on the page in question, most likely; some would work like above, some (like C syntax) wouldn't require any changes, and some might want to use a different method to disambiguate. --Piet Delport 05:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with Piet; only the ones that would incite ambiguity -- simply "Criticism of C" would have ambiguity, but "C syntax" or "Syntax of C" are both rather unambiguous and would not need change. atanamir 06:01, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Surely, criticism of C is pretty unique and should be the article? Are there any other C's that would be criticized? Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 21:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the most likely "C" to be criticised is the programming language, but some may be looking for a criticism of the letter or magazine. Unlikely, but possible. This decision would be left up to the community, though. atanamir 01:57, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As of now, there is only one C that is criticized on Wikipedia, and I am not aware of anyone wanting to write an article criticizing any other Cs. Therefore, criticism of C is unique. The Wikipedia standard is to only disambiguate when necessary. That article should be moved to criticism of C at some point, but we should let this debate finish first. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 09:16, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, "Criticism of C" didn't even exist until I created the redirect yesterday. Was kind of surprised because it was at that wierd, longish name and is a pretty good article :). RN 10:19, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The C criticism article was split off from the main C article, where it had previously been embedded, in response to a requirement in order for the main C article to be designated a "Good Article". I picked the name with the idea that it was a sub-article of the main one. Once the discussion has settled, I don't object to some reasonable renaming, so long as the links between the two articles are fixed up so they still point to each other. — DAGwyn 21:51, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Aaargh! Whoever just renamed the main C article ignored this linking issue. I have edited the C criticism article so its link to the C article does not have to redirect. — DAGwyn 20:20, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The term "criticism" should not be used (I've stated reasons for this on Talk:C (programming language); the more accurate term of "analysis" or something similar should be used. Dysprosia 03:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You also received feedback to the effect that criticism doesn't have to be negative, that the article is fairly balanced, and that a list of limitations has to seem somewhat negative no matter how well-intentioned it may be. The C criticisms article is not at all a complete analysis of the language, just a description of the many characteristics of C that have drawn reasonable criticism. Since C is so popular and wide-spread, it is a target for a lot of sniping and second-guessing, and it is undeniable that that has happened, which is part of what the C criticism article specifically addresses. One of the useful functions of the C criticism page is to bring some balance to that criticism. — DAGwyn 20:20, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I also responded to that comment by saying (and I'll repeat the comment here for the benefit of readers of this page) that the term "criticism" still has primarily a negative connotation and that because of this it is an undesirable term. The article in question has the potential to contain discussion on design points on the language and opinions on those who comment on these design points. That is an analysis of the design of the language, and has the potential to encompass views from all points on the spectrum on the matter. Dysprosia 07:43, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just want to chip in that i agree with DAGwyn that "criticism" does not carry negative any primarily negative connotations in this context. As the criticism article says:
"In literary and academic contexts, the term most frequently refers to literary criticism, art criticism, or other such fields, and to scholars' attempts to understand the aesthetic object in depth."
There are certain fields ("In politics, for instance [...]") where "criticism" connotes mainly negative criticism, but it should be reasonably clear that encyclopedias won't limit themselves to that. --Piet Delport 23:32, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Technically, it shouldn't carry any as you suggest but most seem to think it is a dumping ground for it. I would recommend "Analysis" as that's what I'm doing for criticism page I watch. RN 23:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Analysis" usually implies something more formal, complete and reductionistic, though. Is that what the article is aiming for? --Piet Delport 00:00, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't need to imply that. The article in question however should aim to examine as many viewpoints on as many language points as possible. Dysprosia 02:33, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, the C (programming language) article itself does force the negative connotation on the reader by saying "Despite its popularity, C has been widely criticized. Such criticisms fall into two broad classes: desirable operations that are too hard to achieve using unadorned C, and undesirable operations that are too easy to accidentally achieve while using C. Putting this another way, the safe, effective use of C requires more programmer skill, experience, effort, and attention to detail than is required for some other programming languages." That whole paragraph implies that the article Criticism of the C programming language is negative (why else say "Despite its popularity" and then cite two negative classes?) Mickraus 17:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'll just wait for someone else to paint the bikeshed — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.211.204.77 (talk) 12:52, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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