C history / was Re: newbie building a scratch-built computer

[Brent Hilpert]

Chuck Guzis wrote:
> 
> On 1 Aug 2007 at 20:56, dwight elvey wrote:
> 
> > I'm not sure why you'd say that. It is a simple programming language
> > but is quite remote from most any assembly language I've worked
> > with. The only higher level languages that I've worked with that
> > I could say were close to assembly were Forth and LISP. That is
> > only because there were machines made that were dedicated to
> > that particular lanuage.
> > C doesn't fit well onto any of the processors that I've seen lately.
> > It is always sub-optimal.
> 
> I code a lot of C, mostly for portability between systems.  I don't
> like a lot of aspects, but it's "good enough" for most things--and
> there is the facility for coding inline assembly in many compilers.

To paraphrase Churchill: C is a terrible language, except for all the others.

Apropros of not much, but to ensure this is on-topic, I never hear B or BCPL
mentioned, the ancestors of C, and even 'closer to the machine'. I'm not sure
how many C programmers these days even know it has such ancestors.

Around 1980 I was programming in Z (dev'd at U of Waterloo IIRC, Thoth/Verex
OS), another descendant of B/BCPL and so a sibling of C; a little simpler
and arguably cleaner than C but more data-typing than B/BCPL. Probably would
have been good for embedded systems/micro-controller stuff.