MoreMoschops

Big spiders. Those really huge ones that move really fast.

You mean like the US government funded Peace Corp, who do teach English in China? To quote one statement, "Currently 114 Volunteers are teaching English in more than 62 universities, including five medical colleges and four vocational colleges".

My local council has political enemies on it but we don't frisk them for weaponry when they come in. Given that China is benefiting more and more from trade, do you think it's more or less likely that they will attempt to destroy their trading partners? do you think that they dislike having better, more comfortable lives, and will want to throw it all away?

Is not China's economic rise a comforting thing, rather than frightening?

And there's no shame in that, and there's no reason why you should be instantly able to hack around with C code. It can be very low-level and very tricky to follow - that's the consequence of its power. The right tools for the right jobs.

As an aside, it's quite possible, of course, to write ridiculously tricky code in any language.

If anyone can develop a language that gives precise control at the level of the individual memory address in hardware, suitable for writing device drivers and operating systems, and yet is also possible for someone with only a weekend's experience in programming BASIC to instantly understand every possible nuance of the language, I'll be very impressed.

This is like complaining that the tools to repair a watch are really difficult to use well, and that we should do our watch repair with a hammer and chisel. Choose the appropriate tools for the job.

Well I'm sold.

I use C++ and Objective-C, sometimes both at once (go go gadget GCC). I've had a look through the OOC website - does OOC offer me anything I don't already have?