In defence of C (was:Re:Anybody else tried FreeBasic (aka fbc)?)

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 15:21:12 -0400
| From: Alex Beamish <talexb-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| On 10/12/05, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:

| > Hmm, I underestimated the age of basic it would seem. I thought it was
| > from the 70s some time.

Wikipedia says BASIC was invented in 1963, but some others say 1964.
BASIC at Dartmouth was pretty revolutionary.  Dartmouth decided that
all students should learn to program and BASIC was the vehicle.
Remember: this was before most Universities had Comp Sci programs.
This was about 10 years before before time sharing was common.

| Of course, my Dad got me addicted by showing my little bits of APL code, and
| by road-testing an IBM 'portable' called the 5100 that did both APL and
| BASIC. It was called a portable because .. it had a handle. That unit
| weighed 50-60 pounds, and would only have fit on Andre the Giant's lap.

That too was an amazing machine.  The APL was written for the IBM
System/360 (the standard mainframe from IBM).  The 5100 contained an
emulator for large parts of the 360 so it could run that APL.  Quite a
tour de force.

There was a slightly earlier APL machine built in Canada.  The York
University computer museum has a display.  They have held talks by the
some of the original folks:
  http://www.cs.yorku.ca/museum/collections/MCM/MCM.htm
Their APL was native on the 8008 (not even an 8080).  Also a tour de
force.

BTW, Peter Salus is speaking there on Friday November 4:
  http://www.cs.yorku.ca/seminars/abstracts/salus.txt
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