18 Oct
2011
18 Oct
'11
1:14 p.m.
From: Toby Thain
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 4:18 PM
On 17/10/11 3:33 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote:
> On 2011 Oct 17, at 10:53 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>> In other words, had Unix been a closed
proprietary OS, would we even
>> be talking about C? Or would it be sort of a vintage curiosity like
>> BCPL or B?
> At the time (late-60s/70s), there was an interest
in having a language
> "just above assembler" for things like OS-development -
BLISS?
Old DECUS button: "BLISS is Ignorance"
A language designed by people who drank the Dahl/Dijskstr/Hoare Kool-Aid(TM)
in large enough amounts to cause brain damage.
NB: I am not a C programmer (though I have done some fairly extensive C
coding). I have also dealt with BLISS: Kermit-10 was written in BLISS-10
(the earlier CMU implementation, distinct from BLISS-36 from Digital), as
was the Fortran compiler from DEC. I made a living doing PL/I and COBOL
and Assembler on the 360/370 architecture before moving to the DEC-20 and
Macro-20 (later expanding to PDP-10 in general, with Macro-10 and Midas
for Tops-20 and ITS). I've even written Fortran in anger. I prefer Lisp
for big stuff, Macro-10/20 for little tools, and hack TECO to support
EMACS.
Wow. A disclaimer 5x the disclaimed text.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/