4 ms·

> JOVIAL, NEWP, PL/I, PL/S, PL.8 among other Algol dialects managed it. … with all of them having been developed and run on 32-bit IBM mainframes and other big

> JOVIAL, NEWP, PL/I, PL/S, PL.8 among other Algol dialects managed it. … with all of them having been developed and run on 32-bit IBM mainframes and other big irons with «lots» of memory (e.g. 512 kB of RAM would have been considered huge in early 70-s). C, on the other hand, was developed with limitations of early PDP-11's in mind that were often equipped with 56kB of RAM, so null-terminated strings in C was a rationalised design decision and/or a trade-off. Besides, both, UNIX and C started out as a research and a professional hobby project, not a fully fledged commercial product. Since the internetworking had been inexistent slightly less than entirely, remote code execution that stemmed from buffer overruns was not an issue, either.

pjmlp 5y ago
You can start with IBM 704 used for Fortran and Lisp in 1954, TT 465L Strategic Air Command Control System in 1960, B5000 in 1961, CDC 6600 in 1964, and then compare with the capabilities from a 1964 PDP-7. Read the DoD security assessment on Multics, https://multicians.org/b2.html https://multicians.org/b2.html Afterwards you can read from Denis' own words, > Although we entertained occasional thoughts about implementing one of the major languages of the time like Fortran, PL/I, or Algol 68, such a project seemed hopelessly large for our resources: much simpler and smaller tools were called for. All these languages influenced our work, but it was more fun to do things on our own. Taken from https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html So thanks to their fun, the world now suffers from C strings.
- inkyoto 5y ago
  > Although we entertained occasional thoughts about implementing one of the major languages of the time like Fortran, PL/I, or Algol 68, such a project seemed hopelessly large for our resources: much simpler and smaller tools were called for […] Precisely my point. The definition of fun is up for a personal interpretation.

pjmlp 5y ago

You can start with IBM 704 used for Fortran and Lisp in 1954, TT 465L Strategic Air Command Control System in 1960, B5000 in 1961, CDC 6600 in 1964, and then compare with the capabilities from a 1964 PDP-7. Read the DoD security assessment on Multics, https://multicians.org/b2.html https://multicians.org/b2.html Afterwards you can read from Denis' own words, > Although we entertained occasional thoughts about implementing one of the major languages of the time like Fortran, PL/I, or Algol 68, such a project seemed hopelessly large for our resources: much simpler and smaller tools were called for. All these languages influenced our work, but it was more fun to do things on our own. Taken from https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html So thanks to their fun, the world now suffers from C strings.

inkyoto 5y ago
> Although we entertained occasional thoughts about implementing one of the major languages of the time like Fortran, PL/I, or Algol 68, such a project seemed hopelessly large for our resources: much simpler and smaller tools were called for […] Precisely my point. The definition of fun is up for a personal interpretation.