3 ms·
> DEC's view of the language to use was Basic!. This was at a time just prior to c appearing and it was believed that Fortran was not the language of the future
by dboreham 4y ago
> DEC's view of the language to use was Basic!. This was at a time just prior to c appearing and it was believed that Fortran was not the language of the future.
This isn't quite what happened. BASIC could be easily implemented in a few KB of assembler on a 8-bit/12-bit/16-bit computer. C could not. Fortran neither. Prior to the 32-bit/VAX generation compilers had to be split into several binaries - one per pass, or overlays depending on the OS, making their use painful and slow and not an option on the lower end systems. BASIC meanwhile worked just fine on those low end machines.