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C succeeded because of Unix, not the other way around. Unix was given away and ran on small, inexpensive minicomputers (originally the PDP-11). Lisp typical

C succeeded because of Unix, not the other way around. Unix was given away and ran on small, inexpensive minicomputers (originally the PDP-11). Lisp typically ran on more expensive equipment. High level programming languages have been used to write operating systems, including the kernel: Lisp (on Lisp machines), Algol 60 (MCP on Burroughs mainframes) and PL/1 (MULTICS on General Electric and Honeywell machines). MCP and MULTICS (from which Unix gets its name) preceded Unix. One difference between C and Lisp is that C was designed to run on the PDP-11, and is a close match for its instruction set. Lisp didn't have a native hardware architecture (the closest it had was the PDP-10) until Lisp machines were built, and there were economic reasons - largely economies of scale - why they're no longer built.

skissane 7y ago
> High level programming languages have been used to write operating systems, including the kernel: Lisp (on Lisp machines), Algol 60 (MCP on Burroughs mainframes) and PL/1 (MULTICS on General Electric and Honeywell machines). MCP and MULTICS (from which Unix gets its name) preceded Unix. IBM also has a long history of using (non-standard and semi-secret) PL/I dialects for operating system development. Much of MVS was written in a PL/I variant optimised for systems programming PL/S (which later evolved into PL/X) – older versions were mostly assembly, with successive versions more and more written in PL/S – and that remains so with contemporary z/OS, although brand new development has largely switched to other languages, especially C. Similarly, most of the software for the AS/400 was originally written in a pair of PL/I dialects, PL/MP (for code beneath the virtual machine layer) and PL/MI (for code above it.) (Starting with the CISC to RISC transition, PL/MP and PL/MI were progressively replaced by C++.) Apparently, AIX 1.x and 2.x were written in a mixture of C and PL/I, but IBM got rid of all the PL/I code in AIX 3.x onwards which are pure C.
didibus 7y ago
> C succeeded because of Unix, not the other way around. Unix was given away and ran on small, inexpensive minicomputers (originally the PDP-11). Lisp typically ran on more expensive equipment. Yes I agree with that, I thought I had made that point clear. C won over the other C-like due to Unix. But Lisp-likes lost because they weren't fast enough to run on commodity hardware. That meant that the hardware that became popular did not run Lisp, and didn't have an OS written in Lisp. Instead it did C, this has created a massive momentum that still dictates to this day what language is popular and which one isn't, in my opinion. At least it is a strong contributor I'd say.

skissane 7y ago

> High level programming languages have been used to write operating systems, including the kernel: Lisp (on Lisp machines), Algol 60 (MCP on Burroughs mainframes) and PL/1 (MULTICS on General Electric and Honeywell machines). MCP and MULTICS (from which Unix gets its name) preceded Unix. IBM also has a long history of using (non-standard and semi-secret) PL/I dialects for operating system development. Much of MVS was written in a PL/I variant optimised for systems programming PL/S (which later evolved into PL/X) – older versions were mostly assembly, with successive versions more and more written in PL/S – and that remains so with contemporary z/OS, although brand new development has largely switched to other languages, especially C. Similarly, most of the software for the AS/400 was originally written in a pair of PL/I dialects, PL/MP (for code beneath the virtual machine layer) and PL/MI (for code above it.) (Starting with the CISC to RISC transition, PL/MP and PL/MI were progressively replaced by C++.) Apparently, AIX 1.x and 2.x were written in a mixture of C and PL/I, but IBM got rid of all the PL/I code in AIX 3.x onwards which are pure C.

didibus 7y ago

> C succeeded because of Unix, not the other way around. Unix was given away and ran on small, inexpensive minicomputers (originally the PDP-11). Lisp typically ran on more expensive equipment. Yes I agree with that, I thought I had made that point clear. C won over the other C-like due to Unix. But Lisp-likes lost because they weren't fast enough to run on commodity hardware. That meant that the hardware that became popular did not run Lisp, and didn't have an OS written in Lisp. Instead it did C, this has created a massive momentum that still dictates to this day what language is popular and which one isn't, in my opinion. At least it is a strong contributor I'd say.