[Coco] Expert C programmer wanted

[KnudsenMJ at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/8/05 2:35:37 AM Eastern Standard Time,  
neilsmorr at hotpop.com writes:

I'd take  that with a grain of salt. I've never found C to be very portable
and  sometimes it's horrendously unportable. FWIW, I always look at  Pascal
compilers first - personal taste.



C is very portable once you understand that, unlike early languages like  
Fortran and Basic, C does not try to cover up and homogenize the underlying  
machine hardware -- thus permitting bitwise Boolean operations, pointers,  etc.
 
So you have to make sure that your target machine's notions of int, short,  
long, and char are the same as the assumptions made by the original  
programmer.  Since s/he probably didn't comment these, and you may have no  idea where 
the code came from, you may have to think and debug a bit.  At  least learn to 
recognize the cases where you must be careful.  Different  sizes for "int" are 
especially important where pointers are involved.
 
I luckily escaped the Pascal fad while in school.  Tried to get into  it on 
the Coco, gave it up quickly.  When I feel the need to program in a  really 
ugly language (that can nevertheless be forced to do most anything), I've  got 
Basic09, thanks :-)
--Mike K.