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Keyword is mainstream, so it’s not when the idea was invented - I think Forth popularized it? I can’t really comment on what counted as mainstream before C tho

Keyword is mainstream, so it’s not when the idea was invented - I think Forth popularized it? I can’t really comment on what counted as mainstream before C though. Not old enough for that.

pjmlp 2y ago
Mainstream is whatever people could use between 1958 and 1969, as high level programming language, in whatever computers, universities and companies could afford. Goggle, Bing, DuckDuckGo, ChatGPT,... will gladly provide a list.
- arghwhat 2y ago
  What people could use is not at all what mainstream is. You can use D, OCaml, F# and brainfuck, but they are not mainstream. To define what was mainstream we'd need to talk to people coding at the time and ask them about popularity, adoption, tooling availability, etc. and what languages people were likely to use rather than what was available. And no, I have no need for researching that as I have no use of the information - the point is to say that automatic memory management in mainstream languages predate rust by decades and is present in most languages, not "this specific language should get credit".
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Then you should not have mentioned Forth or C at all, only to show not having a clue about programming languages history. Besides, any Assembly programmer is well aware of what stack memory is all about, bring us even further back than 1958.
    - arghwhat 2y ago
      > Then you should not have mentioned Forth or C at all, only to show not having a clue about programming languages history. The whole point was that these well-known mainstream languages provided the feature claimed to first have arrived in Rust, to make it clear that it was not just theoretical or some obscure language. It's not my fault that you misunderstood the topic or the idea of what makes something mainstream, and instead read this as an elaborate history class stating the absolute first discovery of the idea. > Besides, any Assembly programmer is well aware of what stack memory is all about, bring us even further back than 1958. The instructions you refer to were designed to support stack-based languages, not the other way around.

Keyword is mainstream, so it’s not when the idea was invented - I think Forth popularized it? I can’t really comment on what counted as mainstream before C though. Not old enough for that.

pjmlp 2y ago

Mainstream is whatever people could use between 1958 and 1969, as high level programming language, in whatever computers, universities and companies could afford. Goggle, Bing, DuckDuckGo, ChatGPT,... will gladly provide a list.

arghwhat 2y ago
What people could use is not at all what mainstream is. You can use D, OCaml, F# and brainfuck, but they are not mainstream. To define what was mainstream we'd need to talk to people coding at the time and ask them about popularity, adoption, tooling availability, etc. and what languages people were likely to use rather than what was available. And no, I have no need for researching that as I have no use of the information - the point is to say that automatic memory management in mainstream languages predate rust by decades and is present in most languages, not "this specific language should get credit".
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Then you should not have mentioned Forth or C at all, only to show not having a clue about programming languages history. Besides, any Assembly programmer is well aware of what stack memory is all about, bring us even further back than 1958.
  - arghwhat 2y ago
    > Then you should not have mentioned Forth or C at all, only to show not having a clue about programming languages history. The whole point was that these well-known mainstream languages provided the feature claimed to first have arrived in Rust, to make it clear that it was not just theoretical or some obscure language. It's not my fault that you misunderstood the topic or the idea of what makes something mainstream, and instead read this as an elaborate history class stating the absolute first discovery of the idea. > Besides, any Assembly programmer is well aware of what stack memory is all about, bring us even further back than 1958. The instructions you refer to were designed to support stack-based languages, not the other way around.