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The Power C Compiler

mixsoftware.com

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Re: The Power C Compiler

#71

Post by pjmlp »

znpy wrote: post #58
NotCamelCase wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to pay for a compiler sounds a little funny through the lens of 2022; I wonder if the majority of people buying these software/packages at the time found the idea strange, too.

A while ago I watched a video on YouTube about a guy reviving an old rs6000 workstation from ibm, running aix, with the ultimate goal of running doom. When it talks about compilers, the c/c++ compiler suite was price at like 4 k$… although supposed/allegedly (that is, according to ibm marketing) it won over 4x over gcc (in the performance of the generated code i guess).

They still do, many HPC systems make use of XL compilers.

https://hpc.llnl.gov/software/development-environment-softwa...

Re: The Power C Compiler

#72

Post by vim-guru »

rwmj wrote: post #23

The first C compiler I used! I found a bug where if you allocated arrays larger than 64K (using far pointers of course) accesses would wrap around at 64K. I guess they didn't implement far pointers correctly. Anyway I sent them a bug report with a reproducer as a typed letter -- from the UK to the US -- including an international reply coupon[1], and they were kind enough to send me an update to the newer version on…

I love these types of stories. I can definitely relate as I’ve traded games etc on floppies, but by the time I started developing software professionally, there was internet, ftp etc. Someone ought to create a film about the Apollo launch or some other pre-internet achievement and focus on these bits of the problem

Re: The Power C Compiler

#74

Post by actually_a_dog »

rwmj wrote: post #25
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was just the way things were back then. Compilers were expensive too. In the late 80s I saved up my allowance money for months to buy a Modula-2 compiler for my Atari ST. I still remember reading the manual on my way home from the city, floppies in hand. In the 80s there was a vibrant shareware & public domain scene, but 'open source' wasn't nearly what it is today, and shareware & PD things were mostly utilities,…

To be fair, this particular compiler was relatively cheap. The number £30 springs to mind (which included the book), but I'm not sure if that was the price or just my faulty memory. The internet wasn't a thing for home users in 1989. Only a couple of years later I had access to the internet and was downloading DJGPP. Fun fact is I now work with DJ.

Yeah, I noticed that, too. $20 for a compiler seems ridiculously cheap, even for 30-40 years ago prices. I would have thought it would be more like $200.

Re: The Power C Compiler

#75

Post by jim_lawless »

I used to teach C Programming using the Power C compiler at a local community college. It was a nice enough compiler that the students then owned so that they could continue to experiment and learn.

I found a couple of things to not ring true in what I'd read about the compiler, though. There were issues around a lack of error messages when students would send incorrect parameters to a function. If I remember correctly, I think that one could transpose the arguments in a call to fprintf() so that the FILE * reference was not the first parameter. A few of my students put a format string at the front, a few parameters, and then the FILE *. I believe that the version of Power C that we were using did not flag this as invalid. I question the ANSI compliance claim because of this and a couple other odd issues.

The other thing that didn't really ring true was the often-quoted line about loving the book and throwing away the compiler. Really, the book wasn't that great, in my opinion.

I do believe that one received more than their $20 worth of value from the offering, though. It was a nice enough compiler with a decent book.

Re: The Power C Compiler

#76

Post by soonix »

grishka wrote: post #29
racingmars wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial calculations need to be done with fixed-point, not floating-point, arithmetic. Floating-point can't store the exact value of most fractional numbers, and especially over many transactions for many customers the floating-point errors will accumulate. You need basic addition and subtraction to always be exact (e.g. $15.27 + $91.31 needs to come out as $106.58, not $106.5799999999999999999998), and for operati…

Why would you ever want monetary amounts as fractions or any kind? Why would you want to separate dollars from cents? Just represent them in cents or other smallest units ($15.27 would be 1527), and only make the distinction between dollars and cents for human-readable output. Problem solved. I don't understand what BCD would solve here vs plain binary integers.

as soon as interest or taxes are involved, you'll end up with fractions of cents. Or if you want to split an uneven amount between people.
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