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Article lost me in its first sentence: "Way back in the early 1970s, learning C was a rite of passage for many students." Nope. In the early 70's, all the wor
by pklausler 10y ago
Article lost me in its first sentence: "Way back in the early 1970s, learning C was a rite of passage for many students."
Nope. In the early 70's, all the world's C programmers were still in the same building. Try the late 70's, when many schools got their UNIX licenses, or the early 80's, when vendors were all doing their own PCC and UNIX ports.
- kstenerud 10y agoYup, because that little oversight invalidates the WHOLE article! Bravo! Another case closed, Dr Watson!
- ajross 10y agoIt's an article about writing C code for microcontrollers in the now-hip maker world, not a history lesson. Beyond the reference you quote, nothing from the Bell Labs era is treated at all.
- pklausler 10y agoMakes me wonder why these microcontrollers aren't using Forth in the first place if code space is so critical.
- mjolk 10y agoTime trade-off and ease of test-compilation/env setup and tooling on more "friendly" workstations, at least for my uses.
- ajross 10y agoCan't compile zlib or find a mature IP stack in Forth, probably. The point to the use of C is that they don't have access to an OS and runtime for more hipster-approved languages but still want a robust community of libraries.
- bogomipz 10y ago>"Can't compile zlib or find a mature IP stack in Forth, probably." Is there something fundamental in Forth that precludes the ability to successfully write these?