Re: Native Code vs PCode OT


"J French" <erewhon@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:431ecd25.15618731@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On Tue, 6 Sep 2005 13:04:11 -0500, "Ralph" <nt_consulting64@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> >[Way, way, off topic.]
> >[My apologies to the rest of the group, but I find this difficult to
ignore.
> >Perhaps related to early Germanic elimination training. <g>]
>
> Just for clarification :-
>
> Directive Parameter order Clean-up Passes parameters in registers?
> register Left-to-right Routine Yes
> pascal Left-to-right Routine No
> cdecl Right-to-left Caller No
> stdcall Right-to-left Routine No
> safecall Right-to-left Routine No
>
> There is a rumour that parts of MSDOS 1.0 (AKA QDOS from Seattle
> Systems) was written in Pascal

Your Delphi roots are showing. <g>

The "This Was Really Written In PASCAL First" phenomena has always
interested me. It shows up everywhere. There isn't a single tool, utility,
or operating system feature in the PC World that someone, someplace, doesn't
claim influence or invention from Pascal. It reminds me of that Cold War
tradition where there was nothing of a technological nature that wasn't
invented by a Russian first.

I have been informed on occasion that "Thunder", VB's root, was written in
Pascal.

IMHO: most of it comes from sour grapes. Of all the bizarre events of PC's
early years one of the most amazing is the fall of Pascal. Although it was a
time associated with a multitude of tools - Pascal ruled. Pascal was taught
as a first language everywhere. It was hailed as the primary tool on our way
to that new concept - Structured Programming. Everyone, even us die-hard C
programmers admitted that C was perhaps not 'suitable' for high-level
programming and agreed it was awkward for user interfaces, unless you paid
big bucks for graphical libraries. In comparison after comparison, C vs.
Pascal, C lost.

Then suddenly it was gone.

I feel this view is substantiated by the fact most 'rumors' can be found on
LINIX, Java, or Borland sites, i.e., where ever an anti-Microsoft crowd
gathers. It is although this in some way reflects on the superiority of
Pascal or <insert tool> and cheapens Microsoft's achievements.

However, I am not surprised to discover that in many cases it is true.
Pascal was at one time the premier language. Anyone, with $99, could buy
Turbo-Pascal and conquer the PC. It brought tons of people into programming
who wouldn't have made it past pg32 in the K&R - not because they couldn't
understand it - but out of shear boredom. <g> Also lets not forget that for
a time every 'computer' student was exposed to Pascal. How can there not be
an influence on what we see today?

There are definitely "Pascal influences" in many PC products. Especially
anything requiring a 'front end'. And many inventions were thought of by
Russians first, as well.

-ralph




.

Relevant Pages

  • the problem of constants
    ... literal constants, ... Matlab's "copy on write" behaviour to provide the efficiency. ... prevent any routine from accidently changing the master ... to be any better, in terms of programming theory or efficiency, ...
    (comp.soft-sys.matlab)
  • Re: OCP and Java
    ... > a hard time imagining any programmer with the clairvoyance required ... The only place that I can think of where frozen is used in the Eiffel ... An example is a routine that compares to objects for equality. ... > kind of flexibiliy is valuable there are already programming ...
    (comp.object)
  • Re: bug in rem
    ... returned is due to roundoff error, but the real problem is different. ... values at some point in the routine. ... the programming issues were allowed to take precedence over what was ... what you have put into the 'rem' function input when you write the absurd ...
    (comp.soft-sys.matlab)
  • library function vs system calls
    ... I was going through peter van der linden's book expert C programming ... *call to a routine in a library ... *has the lower head overhead of procedure call. ... executes in the kernel address space ...
    (comp.lang.c)