Author: Jon Dart
Date: 08:18:46 06/08/02
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I did some programming in FORTRAN using punched cards when I was a teenager. I mangaged to get an account on the mainframe at a local university. It was pretty painful - several hour turnaround from the time you hand in your cards to when you find out if your deck even compiled or not. But the main reasons people use "C" are familiarity, the existence of good compilers, and the fact that "C" was designed as basically a slight veneer over assembly language - it is generally translates quite directly to machine instructions and can produce programs that run close in speed to a hand-coded assembly language version. Some chess programs are coded in assembly language, which is the ultimate if you want high performance, but it's much more difficult and time-consuming to program in than "C". My own chess program uses C++. I prefer it over C, but I'm not religious about it. There are other high-level languages that are popular and reasonably efficient, such as Borland's Delphi. FORTRAN is also still an option, although I don't see a lot of people adopting it. --Jon
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