29 Nov
2021
29 Nov
'21
4:17 a.m.
It's a just-so story. We have nostalgia for Unix, C, and the PDP-11
and its instruction set, and we combine them all into the story about
why it all succeeded. But nostalgia can mislead.
I loved the PDP-11 and its instruction set, I loved C, and I loved
Unix. Memory has put causation in there that is not altogether true.
The PDP-11 as an affordable commercial computer, now _that_ was important.
-rob
On Mon, Nov 29, 2021 at 8:50 AM Jon Steinhart <jon(a)fourwinds.com> wrote:
Ken Thompson writes:
The PDP-11 had very little the syntax of B expressions.
All of that was in place in B long before the PDP-11.
To be honest, the byte addressing of the 11 was a
significant hindrance. It was the genius of Dennis
that was able to conquer the 11 as he installed types
into the language.
So, my opinion, the PDP-11 had no design on the
type system of C and moreover it was not even helpful.
OK then. You *would* be the expert.