3 ms·
Why was the first compiler written before the first interpreter?
- drallison 12y agoGrace Murray Hopper's A-0 compiler was not a "compiler" in the modern sense of the word. LISP was not the first interpreter. Most early programming systems used a mix of compilation to hardware machine code and interpretation. Emulation, a variety of interpretation, was used to allow old code to run on newer, faster machines. There is a large and helpful literature on the history of programming languages. Wikipedia has useful condensed information.
- simonblack 12y ago"the infamous Altair 8800" Seeing that this was the machine that fired up the "home computer" revolution and was a direct ancestor to the everyday PC, I can't understand the 'infamous' epithet. In my opinion, that line should read "the famous Altair 8800".