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... and apple runs of top of BSD. C popularity pre-dates workstations. DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation ) , maker of popular mini computers, used it extensi

... and apple runs of top of BSD. C popularity pre-dates workstations. DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation ) , maker of popular mini computers, used it extensively.

pjmlp 11y ago
I only bothered to use C when forced into UNIX world via Xenix. Yes Apple runs on top of BSD, because they weren't able to write a new OS and had to buy one, which happened to be built on top of BSD. Once upon a time they had their OS written in Object Pascal, but then they decided to rewrite it in C to welcome those UNIX devs. Nothing prevents them to rewrite parts of the OS in Swift after the language gets more mature. It is only a question of willingness, political will and money.
- mikeash 11y ago
  What Apple OS was written in Object Pascal? It looks like they had an app framework written in that language, but the OS never was. I believe the Mac OS at the time was predominantly written in assembly, possibly with some (non-object) Pascal parts.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Mac OS, the initial versions. It was a mix of Object Pascal and Assembly. The Pascal extensions that Borland later adopted in TP 5.5.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      The initial versions were pure assembly. There was no room for any high-level code. As time went on and more storage was available, that became a possibility, but much of the OS remained assembly. This was a big part of why so much of the OS ran under emulation when the PowerPC Macs were introduced.
      - pjmlp 11y ago
        Well here there is a bit of different story being told. http://www.folklore.org/ http://www.folklore.org/ Search for Pascal. Cherry picked from the search results http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=3rd_Party_Developers_and_Macintosh_Development.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story... The fact that many C programmers forget, is that it is impossible to implement the C runtime or an OS with pure ANSI C code. Somehow it is ok for C to use Assembly and compiler specific extensions, but not for other systems programming languages to do the same.
        mikeash 11y ago
        Nothing in that link says that the OS was written in Pascal. Yes, Pascal was a popular language for Mac apps, but of course nothing says that the OS has to be written in the same language used for writing programs that run on it. I don't understand your last comment. I am not saying that the OS doesn't qualify as "written in Pascal" because it contains assembly. I am saying it doesn't qualify because it didn't contain Pascal. The early versions were subject to absurd space constraints that required everything to be written in assembly. My understanding is that high level languages started to be used for parts of the OS later on, but it remained predominantly assembly until well after the PowerPC transition.
        pjmlp 11y ago
        Well, I was kind of right and you as well. It was the Lisa that was written in Pascal. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Hungarian.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...

... and apple runs of top of BSD. C popularity pre-dates workstations. DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation ) , maker of popular mini computers, used it extensively.

pjmlp 11y ago

I only bothered to use C when forced into UNIX world via Xenix. Yes Apple runs on top of BSD, because they weren't able to write a new OS and had to buy one, which happened to be built on top of BSD. Once upon a time they had their OS written in Object Pascal, but then they decided to rewrite it in C to welcome those UNIX devs. Nothing prevents them to rewrite parts of the OS in Swift after the language gets more mature. It is only a question of willingness, political will and money.

mikeash 11y ago
What Apple OS was written in Object Pascal? It looks like they had an app framework written in that language, but the OS never was. I believe the Mac OS at the time was predominantly written in assembly, possibly with some (non-object) Pascal parts.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Mac OS, the initial versions. It was a mix of Object Pascal and Assembly. The Pascal extensions that Borland later adopted in TP 5.5.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    The initial versions were pure assembly. There was no room for any high-level code. As time went on and more storage was available, that became a possibility, but much of the OS remained assembly. This was a big part of why so much of the OS ran under emulation when the PowerPC Macs were introduced.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      Well here there is a bit of different story being told. http://www.folklore.org/ http://www.folklore.org/ Search for Pascal. Cherry picked from the search results http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=3rd_Party_Developers_and_Macintosh_Development.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story... The fact that many C programmers forget, is that it is impossible to implement the C runtime or an OS with pure ANSI C code. Somehow it is ok for C to use Assembly and compiler specific extensions, but not for other systems programming languages to do the same.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        Nothing in that link says that the OS was written in Pascal. Yes, Pascal was a popular language for Mac apps, but of course nothing says that the OS has to be written in the same language used for writing programs that run on it. I don't understand your last comment. I am not saying that the OS doesn't qualify as "written in Pascal" because it contains assembly. I am saying it doesn't qualify because it didn't contain Pascal. The early versions were subject to absurd space constraints that required everything to be written in assembly. My understanding is that high level languages started to be used for parts of the OS later on, but it remained predominantly assembly until well after the PowerPC transition.
        pjmlp 11y ago
        Well, I was kind of right and you as well. It was the Lisa that was written in Pascal. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Hungarian.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...