27 Jun
2016
27 Jun
'16
11:28 p.m.
Hard to believe the 8086 chip was “optimized” for anything. The instruction set was
designed for programming terminals.
The iapx32 was designed to run higher level languages (Ada) but despite how “nicely” it
implemented this, it couldn’t counter the fact that it was molasses slow doing anything.
It was easier to build craftier compilers than trying to burn the smarts into silicon.
On Jun 27, 2016, at 4:20 PM, John Cowan
<cowan(a)mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
Ronald Natalie scripsit:
Sure, it was a long time ago, but I’ll tell you
what I remember.
The one thing I do remember is that the SV /bin/sh was written in
these horrendous macros that sort of made it look like algol or
something.
I've always wondered what would have happened if Algol 68 (brought back
from England by Bourne) had out-competed C at Bell Labs, and had become
the dominant programming language of Unix. Probably the commercial
world would have standardized on Pascal, something that almost happened
(the x86 chip is optimized for Pascal in several ways).
--
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org
"But I am the real Strider, fortunately," he said, looking down at them
with his face softened by a sudden smile. "I am Aragorn son of Arathorn,
and if by life or death I can save you, I will."