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""Before C there was assembly language" is technically correct, unless you know something I'm unaware of. That there were other languages between those two isn

""Before C there was assembly language" is technically correct, unless you know something I'm unaware of. That there were other languages between those two isn't important in the context of creating an example in one presentation and it for-sure is not factually wrong. Just so we're absolutely crystal-clear here, how, exactly, would you have phrased the paragraph about C, without wandering off into the endless maze of computer language lineages, but keeping the same general intent, in the context of the remainder of the presentation?

pjmlp 11y ago
It factually wrong because there were options to do programming without Assembly before C existed. One such example is the Burroughs B5000 system with Algol in 1961. This is just one example from many, available to anyone that cares to a little research. I would have phrase it like this: "Before C there were other systems programming languages, but for various reasons they lost to C and now it is widespread through the industry as we know it." Followed by his note on how all computers in the room have their OSes coded in C.
- cwyers 11y ago
  Okay, but would phrasing it that way add ANYTHING to the point he's trying to make? Would it help explain his point? (And it's not factually wrong, you're just deliberately misreading it so you can flog the dead horse about the ancient lost civilizations of programming languages before C.)
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    It wouldn't fool his audience that C was the very first systems programming language to exist. However telling the truth is worthless, lost time and doesn't contribute to the learning of younger audiences. Please excuse me, I have some books to burn.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    "C certainly wasn’t the first high level language, but it was one of the first to take portability seriously" That's totally wrong. The C philosophy and structure were almost 100% due to BCPL with minor changes. BCPL was portable by accident due to its simplicity. They just got rid of every good feature of a systems language to the point that the remainder, barely a language, could be put on about anything. Thompson tweaked BCPL into B to make it work on his terrible PDP-7. That wouldn't work on a PDP-11 so more tweaks by Ritchie into C. That couldn't even handle UNIX alpha so that added structs. That's C 1.0. A year later, people started porting it because it was barely a language & could fit in their hardware. All that was in my link about its history from documents and people that made it. http://pastebin.com/UAQaWuWG http://pastebin.com/UAQaWuWG "Before C there was assembly language" Also wrong and contradicting his claim about HLL's before C. As pjmlp listed, there were numerous systems languages in production before C was designed. It's not like we made a huge leap of faith into structured HLL with C. We actually cut out maintenance, reliability, readability, integration, etc capabilities of existing languages (esp CPL) to iterate into C. And, later on with good hardware, people started adding many of those back because C was garbage that led to all kinds of problems. We can certainly accept a need to learn C language and tooling for working with existing OS or app code. That's called legacy system effect. However, we should never push false justifications for that which detract from superior language design that would've enabled more robust, maintainable, productive development. We can accept both the what and the why of C at the same time. As a side effect, more people might explore features of C alternatives to build the next, best, systems language. Wirth has been doing that for years. Ada still gets updated with one version able to prove absence of many, runtime errors at compile time. Clojure is showing LISP's advantages and it was once used for OS's w/ incredible flexibility + robustness. So on and so forth. Gotta counter the C disinformation and misinformation so enough people know why they should do the opposite of it so some [more] eventually will. Note: There's also the value of removing inaccuracies in historical writings that have negative effects. Mere editing and revision. I hear that's important to some people, too.

pjmlp 11y ago

It factually wrong because there were options to do programming without Assembly before C existed. One such example is the Burroughs B5000 system with Algol in 1961. This is just one example from many, available to anyone that cares to a little research. I would have phrase it like this: "Before C there were other systems programming languages, but for various reasons they lost to C and now it is widespread through the industry as we know it." Followed by his note on how all computers in the room have their OSes coded in C.

cwyers 11y ago
Okay, but would phrasing it that way add ANYTHING to the point he's trying to make? Would it help explain his point? (And it's not factually wrong, you're just deliberately misreading it so you can flog the dead horse about the ancient lost civilizations of programming languages before C.)
- pjmlp 11y ago
  It wouldn't fool his audience that C was the very first systems programming language to exist. However telling the truth is worthless, lost time and doesn't contribute to the learning of younger audiences. Please excuse me, I have some books to burn.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  "C certainly wasn’t the first high level language, but it was one of the first to take portability seriously" That's totally wrong. The C philosophy and structure were almost 100% due to BCPL with minor changes. BCPL was portable by accident due to its simplicity. They just got rid of every good feature of a systems language to the point that the remainder, barely a language, could be put on about anything. Thompson tweaked BCPL into B to make it work on his terrible PDP-7. That wouldn't work on a PDP-11 so more tweaks by Ritchie into C. That couldn't even handle UNIX alpha so that added structs. That's C 1.0. A year later, people started porting it because it was barely a language & could fit in their hardware. All that was in my link about its history from documents and people that made it. http://pastebin.com/UAQaWuWG http://pastebin.com/UAQaWuWG "Before C there was assembly language" Also wrong and contradicting his claim about HLL's before C. As pjmlp listed, there were numerous systems languages in production before C was designed. It's not like we made a huge leap of faith into structured HLL with C. We actually cut out maintenance, reliability, readability, integration, etc capabilities of existing languages (esp CPL) to iterate into C. And, later on with good hardware, people started adding many of those back because C was garbage that led to all kinds of problems. We can certainly accept a need to learn C language and tooling for working with existing OS or app code. That's called legacy system effect. However, we should never push false justifications for that which detract from superior language design that would've enabled more robust, maintainable, productive development. We can accept both the what and the why of C at the same time. As a side effect, more people might explore features of C alternatives to build the next, best, systems language. Wirth has been doing that for years. Ada still gets updated with one version able to prove absence of many, runtime errors at compile time. Clojure is showing LISP's advantages and it was once used for OS's w/ incredible flexibility + robustness. So on and so forth. Gotta counter the C disinformation and misinformation so enough people know why they should do the opposite of it so some [more] eventually will. Note: There's also the value of removing inaccuracies in historical writings that have negative effects. Mere editing and revision. I hear that's important to some people, too.