9 May
2024
9 May
'24
7:03 p.m.
On May 9, 2024, at 5:45 AM, Will Cooke via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
SofTech MicroSystems to be specific. They spun it up specifically for UCSD Pascal and
hired a lot of the projects students as their first engineers and managers. It was an
interesting place to work, mostly because we (the students/new employees) still had the
UCSD development mindset and not the corporate philosophy that SofTech wanted.
Yes, They did the silly games and screwed up a good thing. UCSD Pascal IV.II (4.2) was
pretty good IIRC however it was too little/too late to the party. By then everything was
MS/DOS and C was coming on strong even in the micro world.
The fact that you had to run the P-System OS and the 64KB limit on addressing didn’t help
adoption.
David
On 05/09/2024 7:24 AM CDT Bill Degnan via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Mike
I was thinking operating systems and the early launch version IBM PC, but
yes once the hardware caught up Turbo Pascal was a popular program now that
I think about it. So I guess the PC versions just needed more horsepower
and some useful libraries. But Pascal never matched C
Bill
My perception is that UCSD P system was quite popular in the late 70s on Apple and other
systems. Then when the university turned it over to commercial marketing (SofTech?), the
silly games played turned a lot of people off. Like trying to revoke previously granted
licenses and charging "too much."
I suspect that left a bad taste in a lot of mouths that might otherwise have been
interested. But I was a distant observer at the time; I couldn't afford more than my
ZX-81 and VIC-20.
Will