C Programmer's Environment

[Dr A. N. Walker]

In article <4962 at arcturus> evil at arcturus.UUCP (Wade Guthrie) writes:
> [What is in the ideal C environment?]

and so far, we've been told:

	make, symbolic debugger, error, C interpreter, C compiler,
	vi/emacs, curses, RCS/SCCS, diff, perl, tcsh/bash

(and no doubt others winging their way towards Nottingham even as I type).

	You will all realise that a PDP 11/44 is not an ideal environment,
no matter what titbits are added to the software;  but in over a dozen years
of C programming I have *never* *used* on Tuck:

	adb/sdb, error, C interp, vi/emacs, RCS/SCCS, perl, tcsh/bash;

indeed, only "adb" and "rcs" of this list actually exist on the machine.  I
have to report that I have never missed any of 'em, except "perl" (which is
too big to Yacc).

	"*grep" and "lint" should be added very near the top of the list,
and a cross-referencer (ours is called "xref") is sometimes useful.
Another *major* aid to productivity is the LaserWriter together with
software (ours is called "ascps") for listing programs thereto in 4-up
or 8-up (16-up is going a little far, but possible) format, thus getting
(typically) 448 lines of code per sheet, and enabling surprisingly large
chunks of program to be viewed as a unit.

-- 
Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
anw at maths.nott.ac.uk