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From: rbowman <bowman@montana.com>
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Subject: Re: naughty Pascal
Date: 7 Jan 2026 22:08:15 GMT
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On Wed, 7 Jan 2026 09:56:20 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 06/01/2026 21:06, c186282 wrote:
>> On 1/6/26 05:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>> On 06/01/2026 03:27, Peter Flass wrote:
>>>> On 1/5/26 12:50, John Ames wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 5 Jan 2026 12:33:53 -0700 Peter Flass
>>>>> <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Actually, many systems programming languages have no I/O, the idea
>>>>>> being that non-OS programs call the OS to do the I/O, and the OS
>>>>>> interacts directly with the hardware.
>>>>>
>>>>> "Systems programming" usually implies implementation of an OS,
>>>>> though,
>>>>> and IIRC that was the sense that Kernighan was using. You can't
>>>>> excuse limitations by "oh, the OS handles that" when your program
>>>>> *is* the OS.*
>>>>>
>>>>> * (Obviously, there's a certain point in any HLL where Deep Magic
>>>>> has
>>>>>    to handle interfacing between language constructs and bare
>>>>>    metal,
>>>>> but
>>>>>    the higher up the "threshold of minimum abstraction" is, the
>>>>>    less suitable it is for systems programming in the first place.
>>>>>    Of course, there's also the problem where seemingly *any*
>>>>>    language that's not designed for systems programming will
>>>>>    ultimately get pressed into service for systems programming 
>>>>>    *somewhere...*)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> I seem to recall reading that someone once wrote an OS in COBOL.
>>>
>>>  From what little I know COBOL looked very like assembler.
>> 
>> 
>>    If assembler was RIDICULOUSLY WORDY  :-)
>> 
> Some assembler is...it's a choice. Especially Macro assembler...

I remember a strange attempt to do Win32 API programming in 'assembler'. 
The author more or less reinvented C using MASM.