Re: New VSI blog post

On 8/1/2024 7:16 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

On 7/31/2024 11:20 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 31 Jul 2024 22:46:18 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

On 7/31/2024 10:38 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

Been there, done that sort of thing, before your time (early 1990s).

>
Early 90's before John's time????

>
When did DEC embrace ANSI C?

 The standard happened in 1989 (ANSI) and 1990 (ISO).
 I am not sure when DEC C 4.0 shipped, but given that
VAX C never existed on Alpha, then together with the first
VMS Alpha release in 1992 seems like a good guess.
 And it takes time to implement a new compiler, so
it seems likely that the ink on the printed copy
of the standard was barely dry before management at
DEC said go.
 But I don't think John did C back then - as I recall
it was:
   Pascal - Reagan
   Fortran - Lionel
   C - Vogel
 Arne
  

I started with Digital in August 1983 to work on Pascal.  There were others as well (Steve Hobbs, Joyce Spencer, John Yates, others) but I became the project leader within a few years and was the public facing Pascal person (and rep to the Pascal Standards Committee).  I think the largest we ever got on Pascal was 6 or 7 people.
For Fortran, Steve was the RTL author (he also wrote the Pascal RTL as well).  There have been many names associated with the Fortran compiler including Richard Grove and Stan Whitlock to name a few.  The Fortran team was almost always the largest compiler project in the group.
For C, again many names over the years and the fact that the VAX C compiler started with Dave Cutler, Don MacLaren, Jay Palmer, and others.   Ed Vogel worked on many compilers including lots of time with BASIC. Names you would also see in "public" spaces include Rich Peterson.  The C team was quite large as well.  I'd have to go back and do some research on ANSI C considerations.  There are some archive documents on bitsavers if you dig deep enough.