Re: question about linker

On 30.11.2024 12:59, Bart wrote:

On 30/11/2024 03:25, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

>
 From the various bits and pieces spread around I saw that Bart had
obviously adopted many syntactical elements of Algol 68, and I wonder
why he hadn't used just this language (or any "better" language than
"C") if he dislikes it so much that he even implemented own languages.

 
It needed to be a lower level language that could be practically
implemented on a then small machine.

Okay.

 
Algol68 implementations were scarce especially on 8-bit systems.

Indeed. (If existing at all; I can't tell.)

 
But I also considered it too high level and hard to understand.

This I find astonishing, given that it is (IMO; and different from C)
a so cleanly defined language.

Even the
syntax had features I didn't like, like keyword stropping

Stropping was a way to solve the limited characters available in the
system character sets. Practically, as an implementer, you could use
any mechanism you like. (On the mainframe I had used symbols preceded
by a dot, the Genie compiler uses uppercase, for example. None is a
problem for the implementer.)

and fiddly rules about semicolon placement.

Huh? - The semicolon placement as delimiters is quite clear and (as so
many things in Algol 68) also clearly defined (IMO). - So what do you
have in mind here?

 
As for better languages than C, there were very few at that level.

(But you know you can use Algol 68 on a system development level; we
can read that it had been done at those day. - All that's "missing",
and that's a good design decision, were pointers.)

But okay, it's of course a personal judgement what's "better", and
what you like to use to program or like to use as a paragon for an
own language design and own implementation.

Even
C was not so practical: C compilers cost money (I wasn't a programmer,
my boss wouldn't pay for it!).

At those days everything had cost money. (Probably with the notable
exception of UNIX, as they say, which had more sort of a fee than a
market price, at least for the universities.) But, according to some
historic sources I read, you also payed primarily the system not the
software; vendors supported availability of languages to sell their
hardware.

 
There would have been problems just getting it into the machine (since
on CP/M, every machine used its own disk format). And by the accounts I
read later on in old Byte magazine articles, C compilers were hopelessly
slow running on floppy disks. (Perhaps Turbo C excepted.)

(I don't get what argument you are trying to make. - That you wanted
some terse language, maybe, as you already said above?)

 
By the time C might have been viable, I found that my language was
preferable.

Janis