Re: The integral type 'byte' (was Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?)

On 27/03/2025 02:24, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

On 27.03.2025 00:21, bart wrote:

Some commercial products were low quality because they had to be done
for a price. I think the ZX80 was £100, at a time when my company
produced a business computer, also Z80-based, for £1300. (One client
used one of our machines to more easily develop Spectrum programs.)

 I'm speaking about all that inferior systems that had a comparably
high price without a matching quality. And about years and years
passing without vendors of such products changing that situation.

I guess ... you're talking about either the IBM PC hardware or MS software, or both? (Although PCs weren't expensive.)
It was Keith Thompson who quoted the other day that C was a great success despite all its faults.

What language would you have advocated that could fit into a few KB, and
that could run without a proper file system?

 The first that comes to mind was (for example) Pascal. It actually
became available on several platforms. But it was not comparable
to the omnipresent [lousy] BASIC that was inherent part of the OS
in the ROM. (Well, or on a 8" floppy; e.g. in case of the Olivetti
P6060.) There were other languages available; someone (maybe David)
mentioned some upthread. Myself I bought a Simula compiler for my
Atari ST. Simula is a powerful and comparably huge language, so your
"few KB" excuse is not convincing.

 From what I've just read about Simula [67], you can keep it. Its one redeedming feature is its Algol-like syntax.
Also, by a 'few KB' I meant single figures, like 2-8KB for the code, plus RAM. That Atari seems to have a bit more available.

 I think it was a professor at the university who meant that anyone
who started with BASIC would be incapable of ever doing real CS. -
This is of course nonsense! (And such arguments say more about the
person formulating such non-arguments. - I recall a similar nonsense
mentioned here by someone some months ago concerning OO and Simula
and all other OO languages that took their OO concepts from Simula.)
 The point with BASIC is that if all you know is BASIC without knowing
anything else you probably won't be able to understand the problems
with it. I know you have a broader language repertoire, so I presume
you know BASIC's deficiencies (or at least the deficiencies of those
BASIC dialects that were around until around 1980).

I've never used Basic. But it is one language I admire, even if it is crude:
   10 let a=0
   20 let a=a+1
   30 if a<1000000 then 20
   40 print a

 In the past I had implemented an emulator for the SC 61860; if that
helps you in any way with your argument please let me know.

The argument is that even such an apparently simple processor was not as 'primitive' as you seemed to think.

>
But also at that time - early 80s when Spectrums etc were popular -
there were some wonderful new 16/32-bit processors such as 68000,
Z8000/0 and NS32032, of which only the first survived.

 I've had contact with a couple CPUs back these days; 6502 (6510),
68000, 8080 (Z80), another Intel thing where I forgot the number,
SC 61860, TMS 320 C25. And I read about (but not programmed) a
couple more (the SPARC, one from National Semiconductors) where
I forgot the model numbers.
 The 68000, specifically, is a great example for an inferior CPU
architecture. (Your mileage obviously varies if you think it was
even "wonderful".)

OK, so what's wrong with it then? (It seemed to be adequate for that Atari!)

CPU architectures that I found to be more interesting were SPARC,
the National Semiconductor thing (NS 32016 maybe? nor sure), and
the TMS DSP (where I spent quite some time with), for example.
 But that all was long ago and is meaningless today.

I find I can learn a lot from how simple things were that long ago. The early 80s was the golden age for that, getting away from mainframes and complex OSes, to much more informal systems. Now it's worse than ever.

It's interesting to still see advocates of inferior IT justifying
bad paragons, though.

So you have strong opinions about languages and machine architectures and IT (whatever that is exactly).
I also have strong opinions about inferior languages like C and a few other things. They are not that welcome in a forum like this. But I am at least in the same field: I code at the lower level and also develop a parallel systems language.
The question is, what are /you/ doing here with all your lofty ideals and sneering at everyone who isn't an academic or a 'professional'? I'm surprised you would even deign to look at a language like C.