Perry, <br>
Yes my mistake, // is in C99. Seems like yesterday :-)<br>
And I didn't mean "port" so narrowly, didn't mean to imply he didn't
write an x86 kernel from scratch. And yeah my first x86 was System V,
in the mid 80's.<br>
Incidentally, while I understand that "C with Classes" preceeded C++, I
use the term sometimes to refer to the workable, worthwhile subset of
C++ (as subjective as that may be, it's bigger than K&R C). Most of
the time, for myself, I write in K&R C plus // for a C++ compiler.<br>
Peter<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/26/08, <b class="gmail_sendername">Perry E. Metzger</b> <<a href="mailto:perry@piermont.com">perry@piermont.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br> "Peter St. John" <<a href="mailto:peter.st.john@gmail.com">peter.st.john@gmail.com</a>> writes:<br> > Just for the sake of historicity for those less -- chronologically<br> > enhanced-- than RGB or myself, the joke is attributed to Stroustroup, not<br>
> Thompson.<br> ><br> > 1. Ken Thompson wrote B (late 60's). Really minimal. Based largely on BCPL,<br> > but minimal, ergo "B".<br> > 2. Ken wrote Unix, in assembler.<br> > 3. Dennis Ritchie wrote C (sucessor to "B") to be usably featurefull (you<br>
> can read the entire definition of B in a few minutes, at<br> > <a href="http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/kbman.html">http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/kbman.html</a>, which has been scanned and<br> > cleaned up since I last saw it).<br>
> 4. Ken and Dennis rewrote unix together in C. (Torvalds ported the kernel to<br> > the x86 architecture, with an open license, unlike earlier ports; Pavel<br> > Curtis ported X, lots of people subsequently did too many too wonderful<br>
> helpful things, etc)<br> <br> <br>Linus wrote a new POSIX kernel. He did not "port" any form of the<br> existing Unix kernel. (There were already real Unixes (that is,<br> descendants of the v7 codebase) that were ported to the x86 when Linux<br>
was born.)<br> <br><br> > 5. Stroustrup wrote C++ (which in C means, "the sucessor of C", that is, the<br> > increment operator; so continues the joking naming convention). The name<br> > "C++" is something of a joke, and it's sorta funny that it's not "++C" (give<br>
> you the value after incrementing, instead of before) and it is way more<br> > featureful than Ritchie's usablility requirement.<br> <br> <br>It started in the early or mid-1980s (I forget which) as "C with<br>
Classes" and then evolved (or some might say metastasized). Originally<br> it was implemented with a preprocessor in front of C (appropriately<br> enough called "cfront" IIRC), though the first direct implementations<br>
showed up by the early 1990s.<br> <br><br> > As of C89 (I think) the // comment delimiter is in C;<br> <br> <br>No. C89 (the first ANSI C) did not have // as a comment character.<br> <br><br> > I myself am glad to have functions (methods) associated with structures<br>
> (classes), it's great organizationally. However, I have never writeen:<br> > cout << foo << '\n'<br> > and I never will, other than to illustrate what I don't do. I have no idea<br>
> how that looks wholesome in Stoustrup's world view, definitely he has huge<br> > amounts of language-designer wisdom which I myself do not,<br> <br> <br>I'm not a fan of C++. Many other old Unix hands are also not fans. C++<br>
is sometimes a necessary evil, but it is rarely a pleasure.<br> <br> Perry<br> <br>--<br>
Perry E.
Metzger <a href="mailto:perry@piermont.com">perry@piermont.com</a><br> </blockquote></div><br>