OT: Requesting C advice

[Les]

On Wed, 2007-05-30 at 15:34 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:

> Rick Stevens wrote:
> > On Wed, 2007-05-30 at 14:31 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
> > 
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >>>As far as the libraries are concerned, the initial draft of what was in
> >>>the standard C library made the library so damned big that it wouldn't
> >>>fit in the standard process memory footprint of a VAX at the time.
> >>
> >>Care to substantiate that? As far as the Standard is concerned, it does
> >>not address packaging issues.
> > 
> > 
> > I'm talking about the very, very early days of discussing just what goes
> > in the libraries--and indeed how many libraries there were going to be.
> 
> Ok. Your use of the term "standard C library" is somewhat irregular,
> then. That term now has a specific defined meaning. But if that is
> what you meant, then fine.
> 
> > The working document we had put almost everything in a single library.
> > When we implemented it as a test case on the two most common systems we
> > had (a PDP-11 and a VAX), the linker couldn't handle the library size.
> > Indeed, without segmenting the program and using overlays, the famous
> > "hello world" program couldn't fit on a VAX.  Overlays worked, but it
> > was spectacularly slow.
> 
> One of the first C implementations I used was one on the IBM PC for
> PCDOS, with a limit of 64K total code+data. Ever try using overlays on
> a two-floppy system? I have.
> 
> Grrr, grrr, grrr, was a sound which frequently came not only from the
> floppy disc drives, but from other sources as well :-)
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > 
> > As I said, I wasn't there at the end.  The money was an issue, but also
> > many of the meetings simply degenerated into finger-pointing sessions. 
> > As Charles Shultz once stated in "Peanuts": "Beneath the calm exterior
> > lurk the dynamics of a nursery school recess."  All in all, C is a great
> > language, but it does have warts.  It's a giraffe...a horse designed by
> > a committee.
> 
> Plauger and I exchanged a few e-mails during that period, and
> he made comments of a similar nature. I got to meet him over
> on comp.lang.c 'way back. I'm sure he doesn't remember me, though.
> 

I am somewhat jealous of your getting to know Plauger.  I did implement
PASCAL from the diagrams in the back of the book, and it took some time
to do it.  I was working on a CPM based system by then, and only had one
single density hardsectored disk drive from Northstar.  It took a while.
I wrote the byte tiny pascal system and an editor and debugger that
would all fit in 64 K without overlaps or reloads.  I don't now remember
the program size.  I do remember that my video board overlaid some of
the ram, so I didn't really have 64K, but since it was character based
display, it wasn't too much to pay.
The disk drive would hold 70K.  I still have it, I think.  I brought the
case (real steel with its own powersupply) into the house thinking I
might use it to hold some kind of backup drive.  It would power several
of today's multihundred gigabyte disks.  Don't know if I will attempt it
or not.  That linear supply is probably quite a power hog.  But it sure
is built like a sherman tank.

    As to the C stuff, thanks, mike, that comment from the standard
about the machine may be what mislead me.  Also the way that I
implemented my original C compiler may have been unique.  I just don't
remember any more.  I do remember the joy in my heart when I did the
"Hello World!" program and it really worked.  By that time I had bought
a nice Morrow Microdecision with two floppy disk drives.  Quite the
machine at the time.  some 5 years later I bought my first PC, a 386
running at I think 35 or 40MHz.  And on it I used the very first
commercial compiler I had ever had, It was a very nice C package from I
think Brown Bag software.  How about that for a name from the past.

    Now here I sit with two systems at my disposal, and the "archaic"
one is 10 times faster with 2000 times as much memory, and the "good
one" is dual processor with so much power it boggles my mind.  What a
difference a few decades makes.

    But C is portable.  Just in this thread, we have discussed it
running on z80, 8080 up to Xeon processors, AMD, PDP, VAX, DEC, and IBM
mainframes.  What a tribute to Kernigan and Ritchie.  Wonderful system,
and beautiful to code in.  So close to the native machine, and yet so
expressive.  It was truly inspired.  I have used other languages, from
BASIC to APL (which is probably the most arcane you can get) and even
Cyber systems, but I prefer the simple elegance and efficiency of C
whenever possible.

    I also remember the big-endian vs little-endian arguments, and some
of the consternation that caused.  And the arguments about re-entrant
code, and variable wipes.  C never initializes, so there was a huge
contingent that wanted to initialize things, but when this was
attempted, it broke some things and made some peoples code even more
obscure.  I also remember the arguments over self modifying code, and
even remember seeing some C code that did just that, and was capable of
porting across platforms with the same performance.  Try that in
assembly.  It was and is amazing what a talented mind can do with C.

Regards,
Les H
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20070530/06945d61/attachment-0002.html