> compilers were expensive (this being the days > before free UNIX clones were readily available) I'm not sure what era the author is referring to, here. In

> compilers were expensive (this being the days > before free UNIX clones were readily available) I'm not sure what era the author is referring to, here. In the late 80's, Turbo C broke the price barrier for a decent MS-DOS C compiler at the $79-$99 price range. Shortly after that, Mix began offering their MS-DOS Power C compiler for $20. Tom Swan's book "Type and Learn C++" provided a tiny-model version of Turbo C++ on a disk provided with the book. The GNU ports djgpp and GCC were available for MS-DOS and Windows in later years. > the culture was intimidatory; I'm again wondering what time-period he's talking about. When I started learning C in the late 80's, most of the trade magazines were full of articles that used C as the primary language for whatever programs or techniques were being presented. Dr. Dobbs Journal was full of C code. Before Byte quit publishing source code, one could find a fair amount of C there. Of course, the specialty magazines like The C/C++ User's Journal and the C Gazette contained nothing but C and later C++ code. > This is a huge difference in mind-set > from exception based languages, Yes. C is a language that was designed two decades before Java. At first, I was really taken aback by the author's take on C, but as I tried to digest why he has these perceptions of the language, I ventured to guess that a number of developers who came of age when languages with more modern niceties were available probably also have this view of C. From the perspective of someone who has been able to use more modern languages, C must seem like a rickety bridge that could be dangerous to cross. A number of points that Mr. Tratt makes, though, pertain to the programmer; not the language. Certainly there are library routines that allow for buffer overflows, like gets(). It's been known for quite a while ( since the Internet worm was unleashed in 1988? ) that fgets() should be favored so that buffer boundaries can be observed. Certainly people writing their own functions may not write them correctly, but this is a matter of becoming conversant with C. It's a matter of attaining the right experience.