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To me it was the PC as he alluded to. But maybe for a different reason. When PCs came out, first we had Basic (free) then Pascal and c came along. All were c
by jmclnx 3y ago
To me it was the PC as he alluded to. But maybe for a different reason.
When PCs came out, first we had Basic (free) then Pascal and c came along. All were cheap compared to other languages. I do not know about APL, but IIRC, FORTRAN and COBOL both cost over $1000, the others were either free or could be found for under $200.
So, price won the day. I found Zortech c v1 (not c++) for $99 for my 286. That is where I ended up, and compared to Microsoft c I had at work later on, I thought it was just as good and in some cases better (disp_* libs).
When I went to Linux, back then it was c/c++. For some reason at the time, to me it seemed GNU had issues with providing APL and COBOL. I think that was due to academic snobbery. Now we have GNU APL and COBOL, but too little to late.
- mlochbaum 3y agoFor what it's worth, GNU APL is GNU because the developer chose to associate their project with GNU, not because there was any sort of effort by GNU as an organization to implement APL (see also [0]). It implements what I think is a pretty outdated APL (e.g. dynamic scoping everywhere, no control structures for loops), and I'd say there are better free options now, like Kap and April, and some others listed at [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GNU_packages#What_it_means_to_be_a_GNU_package https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GNU_packages#What_it_m... [1] https://aplwiki.com/wiki/List_of_open-source_array_languages https://aplwiki.com/wiki/List_of_open-source_array_languages
- ghaff 3y agoDeSmet C was another cheap mostly standard C early on. It was Borland that made Pascal cheap. I remember being intrigued by APL but, at the time, on PCs, I'm not sure there would have been any reasonable way to run it. Yes, in general, language tools were very expensive for PC hobbyists in the 80s.