Dennis Ritchie’s first C compiler (c. 1972) • Hacker News Board

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s first C compiler (c. 1972)

#161

Post by hakanai » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 1:49 AM UTC

iasmseanyoung wrote: post #73

josephg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense long would have needed a comment. It needs a comment because “long” and “double” are terrible names for data types. Long what ? Double length what ? Those type names could easily have opposite meanings and meant long floating point / double length integer. WORD/DWORD are nearly as bad - calling something a "word" incorrectly implies the data type has something to do with strings. If you don't believe m…

Yes, int_16/int_32 or something like that makes a lot more sense. Today, not when this compiler was written. The PDP-9, PDP-10, and PDP-18 have 18 bits registers. The world had not settled on 16/32/64 bits at all. Even the intel 80286 far/fat pointers are 24 bits.

If you need an 18-bit int it would be called int18 under this scheme. And encountering things like int18 in code, at least you would never wonder what kind of int it was.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s first C compiler (c. 1972)

#162

Post by hakanai » Mon, Mar 15, 2021, 1:50 AM UTC

zokier wrote: post #44

josephg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense long would have needed a comment. It needs a comment because “long” and “double” are terrible names for data types. Long what ? Double length what ? Those type names could easily have opposite meanings and meant long floating point / double length integer. WORD/DWORD are nearly as bad - calling something a "word" incorrectly implies the data type has something to do with strings. If you don't believe m…

> Microsoft’s WORD/DWORD are nearly as bad. Don’t call something a “word” if it doesn’t store characters. "Word" as a term has been in the wide use since at least 50s-60s, you can't really blame MS for that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_(computer_architecture)

A 'word' on an x86 is 32-bit, but a WORD is 16 bits.

You can _absolutely_ blame Microsoft for using it to mean something that it isn't.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s first C compiler (c. 1972)

#163

Post by pwdisswordfish0 » Tue, Mar 16, 2021, 12:44 AM UTC

kiwidrew wrote: post #146

pwdisswordfish0 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "guaranteed-ubiquitous" about DOS 3.30?

There are (still!) a lot of copies floating around -- both online and offline -- and it runs on the most pervasive commodity platform that ever existed: 16 bit real mode x86. Those binaries will boot on anything from an ancient IBM PC with an 8088 CPU all the way through to fairly recent x86 systems (if they still have legacy BIOS boot support).

You have a different meaning of "guaranteed" and "ubiquitous".

It wouldn't be defensible to use those descriptors for Windows XP. In a word, it would be wrong. Calling DOS 3.30 "guaranteed-ubiquitous" is even wronger than that.