28 Sep
2004
28 Sep
'04
5:57 p.m.
Rumor has it that Paul Koning may have mentioned these words:
If that's what you mean, then the answer is no, not
by many decades.
Unix boxes pretty much uniformly come with all that. BASIC systems
always had it, as did LISP boxes, or FORTH systems. All that goes
back to the 1970s if not before. And of course, any large machine
(timesharing or batch) has always had all this stuff as a matter of
course. The closest you might come is that some of these systems
would offer some languages standard, and some as extra cost options.
Developer's kits are largely a PC invention, I would say.
I wouldn't -- if you wanted to develop in a program that didn't already
come with the machine. There were developer kits for COBOL, Pascal, etc.
for OS-9 on the CoCos (heck, Basic09 didn't even come with it initially
($99 option) - not until OS-9 Level II for the CoCo3 was it standard)...
However, I'd say that most early computers came with one built-in language
standard so you could actually *do* something with the computer... nowadays
that's no longer true.[1]
Heck, even IBM made sure that some form of BASIC or APL was included with
their early OSs... Did OS/2 come with a BASIC? I think they're a Micro$oft
conspiracy... You by an OS, then you have to buy something else so you can
actually *do* something with the OS...
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
[1] and it sucks, too! Like it would've been hard to include a basic BASIC
on the palm. Instead, it does nothing but keep notes & numbers...
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch(a)30below.com
What do you do when Life gives you lemons,
and you don't *like* lemonade?????????????