Re: OT: Why is C so popular?
On Fri, 2003-08-29 at 01:03, Paul Johnson wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 01:59:57PM -0700, Deryk Barker wrote:
[snip]
> > Incidentally Paul, C was derived from B (derived from BCPL) in order
> > to *re*write Unix, which was originally written in assembler.
>
> Not quite the way Dennis has explained it, but OK.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html
Deryk is mostly right. It *was* derived from B & BCPL. It was
not *directly* created to rewrite Unix. KGT did realize very
early, though, that Unix needed a system language, and thus he
created B ("it is BCPL squeezed into 8K bytes of memory and filter-
ed through Thompson's brain"). C was created to solve B's deficien-
cies.
Finally, "By early 1973, the essentials of modern C were complete.
The language and compiler were strong enough to permit us to rewrite
the Unix kernel for the PDP-11 in C during the summer of that year."
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Johnson, Jr. ron.l.johnson@cox.net
Jefferson, LA USA
"I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian
because I hate vegetables!"
unknown
Reply to: