7 Jul
2024
7 Jul
'24
3:26 a.m.
On 7/6/2024 8:39 PM, John Levine wrote:
It appears that Charles H Sauer (he/him)
<sauer(a)technologists.com> said:
John C isn't around to say one way or the other. Perhaps he really did
say that, but ...
o That paper seems to be a reprint of the 1990 IBM J R&D V34 paper
o I suspect co-author Vicky wrote 80% of the paper and wrote the 80%
sentence. (I had substantial contact with Vicky at IBM. She and Peter
became my neighbors for a while after I left IBM. Peter was also a judge
at cat shows and I would see him at those.)
o Marc Auslander and Marty Hopkins seemed to be the driving forces
behind the PL.8 compiler and language. I think their June 1982 "An
Overview of the PL.8 Compiler" SIGPLAN Notices 17 (6) was the first
external notice of the compiler and language.
o Radin's 1976 "The 801 minicomputer" eventually appeared externally in
March 1982 SIGPLAN Notices 17 (4). That paper refers to the "801
compiler" and alludes to differences from PL/I that typified PL.8, e.g.,
offsets vs. pointers, but doesn't name the language.
o ".8" implying 80% of the richness of PL/I sounds revisionist
Far afield from TUHS...
Charlie
--
voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer(a)technologists.com
fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/
Facebook/Google/LinkedIn/Twitter: CharlesHSauer
I like the 80% explanation, but suspect PL.8 was
really named PL.8 to go
along with the 801 processor architecture defined in Building 801 aka
Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights. There are probably
living Yorktown alumni that could be definitive.
John Cocke said in a paper in IBM J R&D V44 #1/2, Jan 2000, p 50:
The result [of the language design] was the PL.8 language, the
".8" implying that it had about 80% of the richness of PL/I.
PL.8 bore the same relation to PL/I as the 801 architecture
had to System/370.
Not gonna argue with him.