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Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

cs.cmu.edu

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Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#31

Post by kabdib »

Veserv wrote: post #14

Just for some context, the MPW C compiler that produced those messages was actually not developed internally at Apple, but was rather done by Green Hills Software [1] under contract as mentioned on the wikipedia page [2] and its source [3] which is funnily enough about this exact same topic. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Hills_Software [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Wor... [3…

I forget what happened to the Green Hills folks, but the official MPW C compiler was an offshoot of the MPW Pascal compiler, and was written by Roger Lawrence at Apple in about a year (around 1987-1988) largely as a reaction to what he thought was a terrible contract.

The Green Hills folks were likewise upset at Roger's effort. "Anyone who says they can write a compiler in a year should be fired." Roger himself held the same opinion, a couple of years later :-)

I sat next to Roger while he wrote that thing, he was in the next cubie over (I was working on the MPW linker and some other tools). He types really fast.

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#32

Post by moonchild »

kabdib wrote: post #31
Veserv wrote: post #14

Just for some context, the MPW C compiler that produced those messages was actually not developed internally at Apple, but was rather done by Green Hills Software [1] under contract as mentioned on the wikipedia page [2] and its source [3] which is funnily enough about this exact same topic. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Hills_Software [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Wor... [3…

I forget what happened to the Green Hills folks, but the official MPW C compiler was an offshoot of the MPW Pascal compiler, and was written by Roger Lawrence at Apple in about a year (around 1987-1988) largely as a reaction to what he thought was a terrible contract. The Green Hills folks were likewise upset at Roger's effort. "Anyone who says they can write a compiler in a year should be fired." Roger himself held…

> Anyone who says they can write a compiler in a year should be fired.

...why?

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#33

Post by mistrial9 »

rjsw wrote: post #19
mistrial9 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a cfront beta site using MPW; for people that don't know, that was the self-compiling C++ from C, before the first AT&T C++ compiler, in the late 1980s.

Cfront was from AT&T, it compiled C++ to C. I had the source to Cfront 1.2, which was before multiple inheritance was added to the language.

I agree and we are saying the same thing. There was no C++ compiler, the C++ language was processed by cfront, similar to the preprocessor and include compile phase. AT&T supplied cfront. The language spec was changing. I wrote applications with it, not checking "language lawyer" syntax problems. I wrote general feedback on performance, and things that would make the language practical. It is hard to describe those days, but concepts of object-oriented programming were new to many people, and I was quite interested in building actual applications. The linker was the common linker for multiple other languages, like gcc today.

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#34

Post by kabdib »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #30
watersb wrote: post #2

MPW is the Macintosh Programmer's Workbench. I had forgotten about these. I think my first real push with MPW was using it as an environment to host the AT&T C++ compiler, which at that time was still a bunch of preprocessor macros written by Bjarne himself.

I was introduced to MPW when I started at Apple in 1995. I started on Quickdraw GX (if anyone remembers that). Not specifically related to MPW, more about the times, a clean compile of the Quickdraw GX framework took something like eight hours. (Fortunately incremental builds were much quicker.) Nonetheless, it was common to kick off a clean build as you were leaving the office for the night. Funny to think about tha…

The Mac you compiled that on likely had a 5Mhz (yes, FIVE MEGAHERTZ) SCSI bus for its disk I/O. And none of the headers had "#pragma once" . . .

Was QuickDraw GX also known as Skia, perhaps earlier in its life?

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#35

Post by kabdib »

moonchild wrote: post #32
kabdib wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forget what happened to the Green Hills folks, but the official MPW C compiler was an offshoot of the MPW Pascal compiler, and was written by Roger Lawrence at Apple in about a year (around 1987-1988) largely as a reaction to what he thought was a terrible contract. The Green Hills folks were likewise upset at Roger's effort. "Anyone who says they can write a compiler in a year should be fired." Roger himself held…

> Anyone who says they can write a compiler in a year should be fired. ...why?

Well, they were clearly upset at losing the contract.

But mostly they were trying to say, "Okay, you probably have a guy who can do that. But it will be a buggy mess and it will go better if you don't give that dev permission to be a hero."

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#36

Post by astrange »

j16sdiz wrote: post #21
nojito wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their test OS for iPhone's is hilarious https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/TigrisAni_15A93720r

How so? This is just a minimal test screen

Many people think Nintendo references are the same thing as jokes.

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#38

Post by wglb »

kabdib wrote: post #31
Veserv wrote: post #14

Just for some context, the MPW C compiler that produced those messages was actually not developed internally at Apple, but was rather done by Green Hills Software [1] under contract as mentioned on the wikipedia page [2] and its source [3] which is funnily enough about this exact same topic. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Hills_Software [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Wor... [3…

I forget what happened to the Green Hills folks, but the official MPW C compiler was an offshoot of the MPW Pascal compiler, and was written by Roger Lawrence at Apple in about a year (around 1987-1988) largely as a reaction to what he thought was a terrible contract. The Green Hills folks were likewise upset at Roger's effort. "Anyone who says they can write a compiler in a year should be fired." Roger himself held…

> Anyone who says they can write a compiler in a year should be fired." Roger himself held the same opinion, a couple of years later

Nonsense.

Three of us did it in a year compiling a language similar to PL/M written in Bliss 36 on a PDP-10. And that was when compilers were much harder to do then than they are now.

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#39

Post by mwcremer »

kabdib wrote: post #34
JKCalhoun wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was introduced to MPW when I started at Apple in 1995. I started on Quickdraw GX (if anyone remembers that). Not specifically related to MPW, more about the times, a clean compile of the Quickdraw GX framework took something like eight hours. (Fortunately incremental builds were much quicker.) Nonetheless, it was common to kick off a clean build as you were leaving the office for the night. Funny to think about tha…

The Mac you compiled that on likely had a 5Mhz (yes, FIVE MEGAHERTZ) SCSI bus for its disk I/O. And none of the headers had "#pragma once" . . . Was QuickDraw GX also known as Skia, perhaps earlier in its life?

Skia was the graphics part. The printing part was “El Kabong” (Quick Draw McGraw’s alter ego.)

Re: Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

#40

Post by jsrcout »

dls2016 wrote: post #22
Veserv wrote: post #14

Just for some context, the MPW C compiler that produced those messages was actually not developed internally at Apple, but was rather done by Green Hills Software [1] under contract as mentioned on the wikipedia page [2] and its source [3] which is funnily enough about this exact same topic. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Hills_Software [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Wor... [3…

I forget why I went into their building, but I always remember a giant T-rex skull in their entryway. I'm not making this up, am I? I did find this press release, but it really just raises more questions than answers anything. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ubm-electronics-and...

I found a Green Hills page with a little more info.

https://www.ghs.com/news/20110427_esc_silicon_valley11.html

Sounds like GH's founder just really likes dinosaurs. (To be clear, if I was in that kind of financial position, I'd absolutely have a T-rex skull, or better yet the whole dinosaur, on display in the lobby).

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