4 Jan
2012
4 Jan
'12
2:02 p.m.
On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
I was thinking that a VT100 keyboard hurts less when it falls into
your lap when you are passing it around the room.
> But,
I've actually had students ask why there isn't a "plus or minus", or
> a "not equal" ?character for use in C if() statements. ?So, I pass a
VT100
> keyboard around the room.
On Tue, 3 Jan 2012, David Riley wrote:
Shouldn't you pass around a teletype instead?
For other courses, perhaps, although it's a little bulky, and a VT100 (or
PC) keyboard is small and light. But the point that I try to make was to consider what
was in front of the
early develpers and users of the language. ? What terminals were they
using?
According to http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html ...
"By early 1973, the essentials of modern C were complete. The
language and compiler were strong enough to permit us to rewrite
the Unix kernel for the PDP-11 in C during the summer of that year."
The VT52 came out in 1975, the VT100 (with its embedded 8080 chewing
on ANSI codes) came out in 1978, well after the nature of C was
established.
So during the critical interval of 1971-1973, when B became C, what
terminals would have been in common usage at Bell Labs? In
particular, what would have they (Ken and DMR) have typed their curly
braces on? (since ASR-33s lack them)
-ethan