3 Aug
2008
3 Aug
'08
11:28 a.m.
Chuck wrote:
I do recall that the Intel rep did say that the 432
was designed as
an Ada machine. That may have been speculation on the part of
marketing type, but it demonstrates where the thinking was.
It was a "retcon". When the key aspects of the 8800 architecture (which
became the 432) were developed, HOLWG hadn't even yet narrowed the
competition from four languages down to two.
It's more a matter that when the Green proposal was chosen in mid-1979,
it happened to be a moderately good fit for the 432 architecture. Since
the DoD was backing it, the expectation was that Ada would become very
popular.
The first high-level language Intel shipped to 432 customers actually
was not Ada, but rather a Smalltalk dialect called OPL ("Object
Programming Language"), derived from Rosetta Smalltalk. The Rosetta
Inc. web site apparently went away within the last year.
Eric