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From: steve@hubcap.clemson.edu (Steve (D.E.) Stevenson)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Bliss
Message-ID: <336@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Jul-87 09:30:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: hubcap.336
Posted: Mon Jul 27 09:30:04 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 28-Jul-87 03:12:29 EDT
References: <627@ima.ISC.COM>
Sender: johnl@ima.ISC.COM
Reply-To: steve@hubcap.clemson.edu (Steve (D.E.) Stevenson)
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 28
Approved: compilers@ima.UUCP

in article <627@ima.ISC.COM>, chuck@amdahl.amdahl.com (Charles Simmons) says:
> ..... To summarize, a language becomes popular by being widely available.
> Wide availability implies that either the language is being pushed
> by IBM and/or the government, or the language is easy to implement,
> or the language is highly portable.

This seems to be backwards.  Things become widely available because people use
them.  While I agree that the government can try, it don't necessarily work:
c.f. Jovial. C is far from easy to implement on non-dec stuff, surely is not
pushed by IBM and isn't all that portable.
-- 
Steve Stevenson                            steve@hubcap.clemson.edu
(aka D. E. Stevenson),                     dsteven@clemson.csnet
Department of Computer Science,            (803)656-5880.mabell
Clemson Univeristy, Clemson, SC 29634-1906

[I have to disagree. C is quite straightfoward to implement on any byte-
addressable machine. We all know of implementations for 68000, 808x, IBM 370,
so on and so forth. I personally mutated the Sys V Vax compler into a usable
ROMP (IBM PC RT) compiler in a few months. And as far a portability goes, I
routinely take source code from the net that is intended for 32-bit Unix boxes
and make it run on my 16-bit PC with very little trouble. Try doing that with
most Pascal programs. -John]
--
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