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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)

#41

Post by jsrcout »

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…

Hello from a guy who used your and Roger's work every day back then. Still one of my favorite developer experiences. (I ported an old-school AI application from its original Sun workstation environment to the Macintosh. Had a blast but our product crashed and burned with the AI winter).

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

#42

Post by vba616 »

fghorow wrote: post #26

MPW. Object Pascal. MacApp. Ahh, memories. (Some of them are even _good_ memories! ;-) )

I remember when I compiled a "hello world" with some new OO framework, possibly MacApp, and it was something like 400K, to do nothing, and I thought that was outrageous and obviously much too bloated for real software.

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

#44

Post by philpem »

Infernal wrote: post #18
secabeen wrote: post #15

> " please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer" Not possible any more!!!

It's really expensive but they throw the rest of a new machine in with it as consolation. EDIT: Sibling beat me by a couple minutes. DO great minds really think alike?

Sometimes, but fools' never differ :)

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

#45

Post by glhaynes »

threeseed wrote: post #13
mastax wrote: post #3

Is anyone at Apple allowed to have a sense of humor anymore?

As a developer I don't want my compiler to be funny. I want it to give helpful, accurate advice as succinctly as possible.

It blows my mind how common taking a silly tone in error messages has become. It's _exactly_ the time the user shouldn't get the impression that you're taking a haha oh well attitude.

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

#46

Post by moonchild »

kabdib wrote: post #35
moonchild wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

I still don't follow. A year seems like plenty of time to build a c compiler. Maybe it won't generate the best code, but no compiler did, back in the day.
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