C, STL, primitive languages that live on and on ... Re: Does anyone here know Siemens STL?
15 Apr
2017
15 Apr
'17
8:56 p.m.
There are a lot of smart people here with wide ranging experiences, so
I like to ask questions from time to time that get more to philosophy.
So "If C is so evil why is it so successful" was one of those
questions.
The answer I see is that it is the path of least resistance to the
most successful outcome in the time horizon of the effort.
Or, it gets the job done.
Personally, I am stuck in the machine control world where things like
symbolic names and type checking are sometimes non-existant. And I
wonder why.
SIL-3 and PLe with stone knives and bearskins.
On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 1:48 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 04/11/2017 07:03 PM, Charles Dickman via cctalk
wrote:
> The Balkanized nature of programming is interesting.
You might find more fertile ground plowing the
plctalk.net forum when
your questions relate to the STL/SCL/FBD/LAD/CSF area.
I am familiar with STL (and some of the others). My question was not
for help. I was trying to present a contrast between the nit-picking
the list was doing about C and that fact that a huge amount of mission
critical programming is done in languages that are essentially machine
code.
It was a ham fisted attempt. Don't post after too many high ABV IPA's.
FWIW, "STL" in Siemens-talk is an acronym
for "Statement List". Why it
isn't "SL" is anyone's guess.
Probably for the same reason that PZD is process data.
--Chuck
-chuck
16 Apr
16 Apr
10:48 a.m.
COSS4 cant event find it on google
On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 7:56 PM, Charles Dickman via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
There are a lot of smart people here with wide ranging
experiences, so
I like to ask questions from time to time that get more to philosophy.
So "If C is so evil why is it so successful" was one of those
questions.
The answer I see is that it is the path of least resistance to the
most successful outcome in the time horizon of the effort.
Or, it gets the job done.
Personally, I am stuck in the machine control world where things like
symbolic names and type checking are sometimes non-existant. And I
wonder why.
SIL-3 and PLe with stone knives and bearskins.
On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 1:48 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 04/11/2017 07:03 PM, Charles Dickman via
cctalk wrote:
> The Balkanized nature of programming is interesting.
You might find more fertile ground plowing the
plctalk.net forum when
your questions relate to the STL/SCL/FBD/LAD/CSF area.
I am familiar with STL (and some of the others). My question was not
for help. I was trying to present a contrast between the nit-picking
the list was doing about C and that fact that a huge amount of mission
critical programming is done in languages that are essentially machine
code.
It was a ham fisted attempt. Don't post after too many high ABV IPA's.
FWIW, "STL" in Siemens-talk is an
acronym for "Statement List". Why it
isn't "SL" is anyone's guess.
Probably for the same reason that PZD is process data.
--Chuck
-chuck
17 Apr
17 Apr
4:23 p.m.
I think timing had a lot to do with C's success.
It's a decent language and at the time powerful and flexible compared to
other languages. Universities picked up UNIX and C and taught a lot of
students. The went forth taking their skills with them.
On 16 April 2017 at 01:56, Charles Dickman via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org
wrote:
> There are a lot of smart people here with wide ranging experiences, so
> I like to ask questions from time to time that get more to philosophy.
> So "If C is so evil why is it so successful" was one of those
> questions.
>
> The answer I see is that it is the path of least resistance to the
> most successful outcome in the time horizon of the effort.
>
> Or, it gets the job done.
>
> Personally, I am stuck in the machine control world where things like
> symbolic names and type checking are sometimes non-existant. And I
> wonder why.
>
> SIL-3 and PLe with stone knives and bearskins.
>
> On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 1:48 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org wrote:
> > On
04/11/2017 07:03 PM, Charles Dickman via cctalk wrote:
> >> The Balkanized nature of programming is interesting.
>
> > You might find more fertile ground plowing the plctalk.net forum when
> > your questions relate to the STL/SCL/FBD/LAD/CSF area.
>
> I am familiar with STL (and some of the others). My question was not
> for help. I was trying to present a contrast between the nit-picking
> the list was doing about C and that fact that a huge amount of mission
> critical programming is done in languages that are essentially machine
> code.
>
> It was a ham fisted attempt. Don't post after too many high ABV IPA's.
>
> > FWIW, "STL" in Siemens-talk is an acronym for "Statement
List". Why it
> > isn't "SL" is anyone's guess.
>
> Probably for the same reason that PZD is process data.
>
> > --Chuck
>
> -chuck
>
--
4.4 > 5.4
4:33 p.m.
On 04/17/2017 01:23 PM, Guy Dawson via cctalk wrote:
I think timing had a lot to do with C's success.
It's a decent language and at the time powerful and flexible compared
to other languages. Universities picked up UNIX and C and taught a
lot of students. The went forth taking their skills with them.
C is pretty much mandatory if you wanted to use Unix. And Unix was one
of the very few "portable" operating systems. So, initially, you saw C
only in Unix shops.
--Chuck
18 Apr
18 Apr
1:24 a.m.
On Apr 17, 2017, at 1:33 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 04/17/2017 01:23 PM, Guy Dawson via cctalk wrote:
The original K&R C is also sufficiently simple and sufficiently sloppy that one can
hack together a compiler that works well enough in a very short amount of time and that
can run on or at least target a relatively small system, even an early-1980s micro. And if
you need to produce better code, you just need to change what you wrote, because there?s
such a close correspondence between C code and generated assembly.
So if you?re bringing up a platform and have some access to Unix or Unix-like tools, what
do you do, invent your own infrastructure? Or just sit down for a week with lex & yacc
and knock out a C compiler? (Maybe even piggybacking on your installation?s existing cpp?)
Heck, some environments never even became self-hosting: I hear turning a new build of the
Amiga OS still required some build steps to be performed on a Sun 3, and others to be
performed with different compilers, assemblers, etc. No unified toolchain there!
People also still get upset that modern compilers reject things like obvious NULL
dereferences as undefined behavior. ?It should just dereference 0, who knows, that might
be fine!? The ?as-if? rule wasn?t nearly as much of a thing in the 1970s and early 1980s
as it is in modern compilers.
-- Chris
I think timing had a lot to do with C's
success.
It's a decent language and at the time powerful and flexible compared
to other languages. Universities picked up UNIX and C and taught a
lot of students. The went forth taking their skills with them.
C is pretty much mandatory if you wanted to use Unix. And Unix was one
of the very few "portable" operating systems. So, initially, you saw C
only in Unix shops.
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