Critique: Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language. I nominated Kernighan's Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language in our informal Best Design Paper survey.

This caused some eyebrows to be raised, I can tell you. It also prompted a very informative critique which was posted to the LtU DG.

I still like Kernighan's paper, but I am starting to be ashamed of it.

[Lambda the Ultimate]

Very good critique of a paper that has received too much accolade for some reason. Much of Kernighan's argument was bunk, but his skillful writing hides this. IMHO, K&R book was the major factor in C's victory over Pascal. It's written so well and persuasively people could not see through all the defects of C. Wirth's books, while competently written, do not read well. Side note: it's interesting to note Bell Labs folks (dmr, rob, bwk, etc) write very, very well - all their papers and books (typeset decently in troff) are always delightful reads.

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