Dana Bell

Last week at the book fair, a couple of men, father and son I believe, were browsing the collection and openly commenting to each other about their findings. At one time, the son came across some books on C++ programming and questioned if anyone used C any more. They eventually concluded that C died in about 1998.

That was amusing to me, a C/C++ programmer. Not only is C not dead, Microsoft is still making C compilers, companies are still searching for C++ programmers, and many of the most popular languages today are based in part on C. Dozens of the functions available in PHP, which I'm reviewing now, are C look-a-likes, down to cryptic-isms of vfprintf() and strrchr().

But, then, this isn't about C programming at all. It's just amusing how so many people will stage things so they can appear that they know something, or to have the insight on an issue. It's amusing that a person's self-worth is based so much on what another person thinks of them. Within the workforce where this is a practical consideration, it's a little different, but outside among strangers, it's just sad.

Then it becomes even more humorous when you discover that they don't even know what they are talking about. But, that is so common today.