10 May
2024
10 May
'24
9:44 p.m.
Circa 1986 I was working at the Research School of Physical Sciences at the
Australian National University.
As late as that we were still running CP/M on an eclictic mix of Imsai8080
and STD Bus based machines. These were all running laboratory
experiments.
Turbo Pascal was king in that environment. C compilers were just way too
weird to even consider. Even when we started rilling out IBM PC's in about
1988, we still used Turbo Pascal. Re compiling apps for the new platform
was magic...
When I left there and moved into a small packet switching hardware
developed in the mid 90s, we used Turbo pascal for the PC side of any
interface, and Cross compiled C for the 68000/010/020 based hardware plug
in line controllers. Everything was hosted in a custom VME rack system
running Unix.
C didn't enter my world until I started running FreeBSD in the late 90's
where it was essentially part of the OS. I remember paying $600 bucks AUD
for a Borland C compiler running under Windows, but the whole concept of
writing a simple app was insane.
Now I use C and C++ regularly for small microcomputers, but still not on my
CP/M systems.
Doug
On Sat, 11 May 2024, 5:01 am Chuck Guzis via cctalk, <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
There have been some minor skirmishes in the MCU world
over what
language should be used when programming.
C/C++ is very much top dog, probably because the development suites are
written for that.
There's a small group that advocates Python; and some say that Ada is
best. But they represent a very small segment.
--Chuck