[TUHS] History of popularity of C

[Toby Thain]

On 2020-05-21 4:56 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 12:17 PM Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au
> <mailto:toby at telegraphics.com.au>> wrote:
> 
>     - inexpensive compiler availability was not very good until ~1990
>     orlater,
> 
> Hrrumpt  The Gnu C compiler was starting to be available by the
> mid-1980s in alpha/beta form. rms was looking for places to start.  He

Right, things were changing, but costly C compilers were a reality well
into the 90s, unless your use case happened to coincide with a gcc port.

And the reason this matters is that it contradicts the "C is popular
because compilers were easy" assertion. Not "easy", and not necessarily
cheap or free either.

> approached a number of folks, from Tanenbaum to some of the vendors (he
> knew Masscomp had written a compiler from scratch which we away the
> binaries gave to our customers and he called me asking if we would
> donate it.  We had donated development hardware and I was still his
> contact to the Gnu project at that point).
> 
> As far as I know, he ended up writing his own because he could not find
> one to start with.  ...
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
>     but C had been taking off like wildfire for 10 years before that
> 
> At least 15 years before.  By 1975, it was a solid fixture at most
> Universities.

Yes. I should have said "more than 10" :-)

--Toby


> 
>  
> 
>     - by the time gcc was mature (by some definition, but probably
>     before1990)
> 
> Mature is the key word here.   gcc does not really start to mature until
>  Cygnus takes it over.  But it was quite usable for the systems that
> targetted it.