7 Aug
2015
7 Aug
'15
1:58 p.m.
+1. This is my philosophy as well. If I can run something besides UNIX on a
machine, I will, and if I can program in something besides C, I will often
like to take the time out to play (although if I'm actually trying to "do"
something, I'll most likely do it in C because I'm most comfortable there)
... Not that I don't like UNIX, it's a fine system and wrangling it is a
fine career but there are plenty of machines that will run it; the great
variety in it is one of the things I love most about historical computing.
Best,
Sean
On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 4:47 PM, Guy Sotomayor <ggs at shiresoft.com> wrote:
I view the language issue along the same lines as the
OS (or monitor, or
???) that exists on
the various classic computers. With some notable exceptions, I tend not
to run Unix on my
classic HW but one of the original OS's that the HW was shipped with. The
same goes for
programming languages. I don't want to write everything in "C". In some
cases C imposes
too heavy a burden (MVS 3.8 J for example) and isn't in line with the
"flavor" of the machine
and/or OS. In the case of my Symbolics machines, even though there is a C
compiler for it,
my question is "why?". It's a LISP machine, you should write in LISP
(after all even the OS is
written in LISP).
When I'm doing programming, I choose the language that's most
appropriate. Not only based
upon the problem at hand but the environment/machine it's intended to be
used on. For
example, for my MEM11 project, I'm using a uP that is designed to run
Forth, so I'm writing
everything in Forth (including the simulator). It turns out to be really
efficient and low
overhead. I can't imagine what it would take for a C-runtime to provide
the environment
that I currently have with Forth.
TTFN - Guy
On 8/7/15 12:10 PM, Sean Caron wrote:
I suppose so ... in the process of building
various little
single-board-computers based on historical microprocessors, I end up using
their corresponding assembly languages, some of which are probably no
longer really in commercial use.
Mostly on UNIX I just use C (or Perl, or ...) but on other platforms where
other languages are available, like on VMS, or on platforms where C (or
even Pascal) is _not_ available (say, MTS or MVS 3.8J on Hercules) I like
to play around with some of the older languages, that you might not see
used so much anymore ... Pascal, LISP, FORTRAN, PL/I, SNOBOL, of course
good ole BASIC ... whatever's available and I have some reference
materials
for (I enjoy collecting good old EE/CS textbooks as well) ... mostly these
are little "toy" programs though, just to run the compilers through their
paces and see the OS run a few executables ... I'm not doing any real
development in FORTRAN or PL/I :O
Best,
Sean
On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 12:18 PM, Eric Christopherson <
echristopherson at gmail.com> wrote:
Is there a subset of this group for people who like to program in
> languages or language implementations or libraries that are no longer
> in common mainstream use? Or other groups for such a thing?
>
> --
> Eric Christopherson
>
>