[Info-vax] Viable versus ideal programming languages

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 3/23/22 12:27, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> Den 2022-03-23 kl. 12:29, skrev Bill Gunshannon:
>> On 3/23/22 03:36, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>>> Den 2022-03-22 kl. 20:30, skrev Bill Gunshannon:
>>>> On 3/22/22 14:42, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>>> On 2022-03-22, Jan-Erik Söderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> When talkning about these kind of systems, you need to
>>>>>> qualify "support". It is not that you are able to run
>>>>>> a C-compiler on any of those "platforms". But there are
>>>>>> dev tools available for Windows/Linux or such, that does
>>>>>> have a C-compiler included for these platforms.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It is more correct to talk about C-compilers that support
>>>>>> these platforms, not the other way around.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> That's a fair point Jan-Erik. When talking about embedded 
>>>>> environments,
>>>>> we really are indeed talking about C compilers that support the 
>>>>> embedded
>>>>> environment as a target environment, not a host environment.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In the two examples I gave, Z80 and 6809 the C-compilers do support
>>>> the environment they run in.  And do it natively.
>>>>
>>>> bill
>>>>
>>>
>>> Compilers running on Z80 and/or 6809 plattforms natively?
>>> Maybe it is tecnicaly possible but I do not see the point.
>>
>> Why would you think it was not technically possible? Systems
>> like the Z80 and 6809 are complete computers and support lots
>> of languages just like other systems.  On my still running Z80's
>> I have not only C but BASIC, Pascal, COBOL, Fortran, APL.  It
>> even has limited TCP/IP abilities thru an add-on board that
>> also provides emulated hard disks on CF cards.
>>
>> On the 6809, which by the way is running multi-user/multi-
>> tasking, I have C, Pascal, Logo and BASIC.  COBOL was
>> available, but I never had it.  It also supports TCP/IP
>> and emulated hard disks over a very fast serial connection.
>>
>> And if I told you what these machines actually are you would
>> probably be rolling on the floor laughing.
>>
>> People today are spoiled.  They don't remember when we used to
>> run the world on these much smaller systems.
>>
>> bill
>>
> 
> Well, I grew up with the IMSAI and such system. Z80, 6800,
> 6809, SC/MP and so on up to todays PIC16/PIC18 are well known
> to me. But OK. You could back in time write a small compiler
> to run on these, but it would not be up do todays standards.
> 

Define today's standards.  :-)

Certainly not ANSI but some of us don't really care.  K&R was
good enough to develop one of the most prevalent OSes in use
today.  What more is needed?

As for the other languages.  I run the same Fortran that was in
use on everything from minis to mainframes.  Full Pascal on both
the Z80 and 6809.  Same COBOL that ran on Primes, Univac 1100, RSX,
RSTS, and even VMS.  And a version of BASIC on the 6809 that is
far beyond the BASIC that came out on the PC years later. And APL
by its very nature is a perfect fit for these systems. There were
a number of other languages, PILOT, Smalltalk, Lisp etc. but they
weren't really any more successful on bigger machines.

I wonder how much of this notion that small systems aren't useful
for anything but playing games contributed to companies like DEC
missing the boat when the micro world came along.

bill