6 Mar
2025
6 Mar
'25
5:09 p.m.
On Wed, Mar 5, 2025 at 11:03 PM John Levine <johnl(a)taugh.com> wrote:
I believe the earliest versions of C were on a GE 635, a word addressed
machine comparable to a PDP-10. But it moved to a PDP-11 soon enough
where the byte and word addresses motivated the datatypes that turne
I believe the history is this.... Ken write the original B
interpreter/subsystem
for in Assembl;er (see the Unix V0 stuff). Dennis
write a new B compiler in B. That was moved the GE635 (and Steve Johnson
brought it with him to Waterloo). When the PDP-11 came, Dennis started
change the compiler to add features for the PDP-11. This was originally
called "New B" (or nb). He used a continuous development scheme.
Originally, nb could accept B, but ass Dennis added more and more features
that were not compatible (basically as typing was added), nb became so
different it was renamed C.
Johnson's comment was that by the time he returned from Waterloo, no one
was using B anymore.
At some point, Synder (who was a summer student) wrote a C compiler for the
PDP-10. I am unclear if that was before the Honeywell 6000 back end,
although given the dates, if you look at the code repositories, I >>think<<
it was. FWIW: by 1978, Dennis and Brian do not mention the PDP-10 on page
179 of K&R — only the PDP-11, Honeywell, IBM 360/370 and Interdata 8/32.
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