From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!aioe.org!5WHqCw2XxjHb2npjM9GYbw.user.gioia.aioe.org.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: why the pascal family of languages (Pascal, Ada, Modula-2,2,Oberon, Delphi, Algol,...) failed compared to the C family? Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2021 16:38:59 +0200 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: References: <5afvagd0g4uajs1ji35v3lorkgb2kd56qu@4ax.com> <87wnrkf9pr.fsf@nightsong.com> <37c582bb-3012-4954-a26c-5d9614ac0c84n@googlegroups.com> <0001HW.2664183000DCDBDE700005E5438F@news.individual.net> <87k0nff07k.fsf@nightsong.com> <0001HW.2665B79F01080BFC700005E5438F@news.individual.net> <87fsy2febp.fsf@nightsong.com> <0001HW.2666503201136FD9700005E5438F@news.individual.net> <877djdfs8h.fsf@nightsong.com> <0001HW.2666F48E011A97D0700009A5738F@news.individual.net> <52640622-179a-40d3-a0c1-da113a8984f2n@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 5WHqCw2XxjHb2npjM9GYbw.user.gioia.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.10.2 X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2 Content-Language: en-US Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:62089 List-Id: On 2021-06-02 16:04, John Perry wrote: > On Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at 6:04:49 PM UTC-5, Bill Findlay wrote: >> On 1 Jun 2021, Paul Rubin wrote >> (in article <877djdf...@nightsong.com>): >>> Bill Findlay writes: >>>>>> The 20KSLOC compiler ran on a 1.5MIPS machine. >>>>> Yes, but 1) 20KSLOC per what unit of time, >>> >>> Ok, but that's maybe 5x slower than Turbo Pascal, which compiled 1000s >>> of LOC per second on machines of that class. >> Well that is not what emerged in the conversation I reported. >> The details are vague now, the gist was that the 1977 compiler >> on comparable machines was several times faster that Turbo. > > May I ask what is meant by "comparable machines"? Around the end of 80's we used the dhrystone benchmark to compare machines. > Here's why I ask: it can't have been a machine based on the Intel 8088, because that wasn't available until 1979. An elderly embedded engineer I know says that the CPU used in the PC series, at least the early PC's (8088 & 286) was a terrible CPU. He likes to joke how his <1MHz 6809-based "Trash 80 Color Computer" at $500 could run circles around the >4MHz 8088-based IBM at $1500. That is my recollection too. I remember that an elderly 1MHz PDP-11 outperformed 12MHz 286. But the instruction set of PDP-11 was eons ahead of the 286's mess. > So I'm curious if you know the basis of the claim that it was comparable hardware: clock speed, RAM, etc. It is simply so that C compilers were garbage that time. C is a difficult language to compile comparing to Turbo Pascal, especially using the methods that were popular then. The only decent C compiler I remember from that time was DEC VAX C. Even advanced machines like Motorola 68k, HP had horrific C compilers. [Sun's SPARC C was somewhat better] The first thing to do was to bootstrap an early GCC on these machines, because the standard compilers were insufferable. I carried the sources with on a tape (maybe even on a reel, I do not remember). That was fun. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de