Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language?

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Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language?
Date	2012-07-25 16:53 -0400
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On Wed, 25 Jul 2012, vandys@vsta.org wrote:

> Date: 25 Jul 2012 18:07:01 GMT
> From: vandys@vsta.org
> Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
> Subject: Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language?
> 
>>> AT&T pulled of a very clever manoeuvre when they licenced Unix to the
>>> universities for next to nothing. Obviously, I don't know if it was a
>>> deliberate move, but the side effect was to breed generation after
>>> generation of C programmers. That obviously 'bubbled up' to the
>>> workplace as those students graduated.
>>> ...
>> This worked because AT&T was a well-known and respected entity
>> (especially Bell Labs, which developed it).
>
> To be fair, C hit a very sweet spot at the time.  We were faced with PL/1
> type languages, Pascal-oid ones, Fortran was still around, and then there
> were the brutally ugly ones like Bliss.  C let you quickly write source which
> compiled into decent machine code.  The compiler fit on a PDP-11.  The C
> library provided a lot of stuff which saved you time, and C was good at
> not getting in the way of what you were trying to do while still being
> helpful.
>
> Not only was the software easily gotten (at a university, anyway), but the
> documentation was very approachable.  Folks may not realize what a difference
> it made, but Kernighan/Ritchie/Thompson and such used a very readable,
> conversational style which made it much easier to get up to speed on what
> they provided.  The norm back then was IBM-style "this page intentionally
> left blank" style of technical tomes.
>
> And yes, I was one of those who picked up C in college, then helped it
> displace Modcal at HP once I was in the workforce.  With hindsight I still
> believe it was the optimal choice for that time in technology.

Modcal!!!  I was one of the first recipients of the HP9000 series 540 
outside the continental US.  The 5xx was build upon the Focus chip set, a 
32bit micro processor architecture (arguably one of the first), which 
predated the PA-RISC architecture and its HPUX variant ran on top of a 
hardware interface written in Modcal, IIRC.  The 5xx was short lived, and 
replace rapidly by the PA-RISC when it came out ...

I also used the SPL (systems programming language) on the HP 3000 MPE-V 
system, which was what the bulk of MPE was written in (a 16 bit stack 
oriented architecture with segmented virtual code space) ... ahhh good 
times 8-) ....

Truly a blast from the past, Andy ...

Cheers,
Rob Sciuk

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The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Bluebee <visualforth@rocketmail.com> - 2012-07-17 17:57 -0700
  Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-07-18 01:30 -0700
    Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-07-18 15:19 +0200
      Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-07-18 08:24 -0700
      Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2012-07-18 16:25 -0700
        Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Ron Aaron <rambamist@gmail.com> - 2012-07-19 08:35 +0300
          Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hannu Vuolasaho <hannu.vuolasaho@nospam.tut.fi.invalid> - 2012-07-19 06:31 +0000
          Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? visploveslisp@gmail.com - 2012-07-25 16:49 -0700
        Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-07-19 01:55 -0700
          Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-07-19 09:09 -1000
            Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-19 19:36 -0700
              Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Spam@ControlQ.com - 2012-07-20 12:22 -0400
            Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? kenney@cix.compulink.co.uk - 2012-07-20 12:08 -0500
          Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-19 18:49 -0700
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              Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-24 00:21 -0700
        Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2012-07-19 11:20 +0000
        Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? "Clyde W. Phillips Jr." <cwpjr02@gmail.com> - 2012-07-24 20:01 -0700
          Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-24 23:00 -0700
            Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-07-25 01:22 -0700
              Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-25 01:51 -0700
              Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-07-25 07:18 -1000
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? vandys@vsta.org - 2012-07-25 18:07 +0000
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Spam@ControlQ.com - 2012-07-25 16:53 -0400
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-07-26 01:46 -0700
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-26 22:48 -0700
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-07-27 23:44 +0200
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-27 15:25 -0700
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-07-28 00:44 +0200
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Marc Olschok <nobody@nowhere.invalid> - 2012-07-28 18:15 +0000
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-07-28 13:35 -0500
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-07-28 21:59 -0700
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Spam@ControlQ.com - 2012-07-30 11:53 -0400
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-30 20:38 -0700
              Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-07-25 23:25 +0200
              Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? visploveslisp@gmail.com - 2012-07-25 16:52 -0700
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-25 17:00 -0700
              Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? visploveslisp@gmail.com - 2012-07-25 17:01 -0700
              Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-07-25 17:10 -0700
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-25 22:44 -0700
              Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-07-26 05:24 -0400
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-07-26 05:26 -0400
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-26 22:26 -0700
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-07-27 13:52 -0400
                Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-27 15:52 -0700
            Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-07-25 01:30 -0700
    Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Bluebee <visualforth@rocketmail.com> - 2012-07-21 16:17 -0700
  Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-07-18 15:13 +0200
    Re: The Secret of a Successful Programming Language? visploveslisp@gmail.com - 2012-07-28 21:56 -0700

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