16 Jul
2021
16 Jul
'21
2:50 p.m.
Clem Cole asks:
> I wonder why Jay did his version? Maybe he wanted more modern C
> features since the Snyder compiler would been based on a very early C
> dialect.
I would guess that was one strong reason. Snyder was at Bell Labs
during the very time B transformed into C, and brought that version back
to MIT. If you think K&R C looks outdated and crufty, you may balk at
this "primeval C". (I find it quite charming myself.)
The compiler is also quite slow and the emitted code is not very good.
Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
Besides our PDP-10s, we had several PDP-11s and VAXes
that could run
Unix, so we wanted our software to run on all of those systems
I think the Snyder compiler wouldn't be the best for moving code around
these computers. I can see pcc would be a much better choice.