29 Mar
2002
29 Mar
'02
2:48 a.m.
A friend was claiming that with the UCSD P-System, one
could "compile
once"
and then "run anywhere" (where
"anywhere" means different kinds of
computers running the P-System, not different instances of
the same computer).
Was this true?
I've never seen it contradicted.
Did users commonly compile on system A and then take
the P-Code to
system B and run it successfully?
It wasn't likely common.
I'd have thought that media incompatibility would
have tended to
limit this capability.
Serial ports and modems would more or less get around this problem.
Was any commerical P-System software sold that was a
single binary,
but the vendor expected the user to be able to install/run it on
any brand/model of P-System? (Or, did vendors have to produce a version
for every platform?)
The Smalltalk-80 System also used an interpreter, called the bytecode
interpreter, and it was in fact common to take an application compiled
on, say, a Xerox Dorado and run it on a Xerox Magnolia, or even a
Tektronix box. I've seen references recently to an Alto version of
Smalltalk-80 2.2, so the apps crafted at XSIS (Xerox Special Information
Systems) like The Analyst(tm), might have been worked out on Altos
then run at the The Company on Magnolias.
-dq
--
-Douglas Hurst Quebbeman (dougq(a)iglou.com) [Call me "Doug"]
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away." -Tom Waits