[OT] PDP-11 programmer wanted?

[D.M.Chapman]

I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...

Fancy a job? :-)

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-Greetings-from-GE-Canada

http://goo.gl/177Iv

Darren

[Bob Eager]

Some students posted this on my FaceBook group and suggested I could do
it!



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

[The Natural Philosopher]

Golly. I used to write C on one of those..


--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

[fred]

In article <b2bplkF...@mid.individual.net>, Bob Eager
<news...@eager.cx> writes

>On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:01:30 +0000, D.M.Chapman wrote:
>
>> I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...
>>
>> Fancy a job? :-)
>>
>> http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-Greetings-
>from-GE-Canada
>>
>> http://goo.gl/177Iv
>
>Some students posted this on my FaceBook group and suggested I could do
>it!
>

Make sure your 3rd party liability insurance is up to date ;-)
--
fred
it's a ba-na-na . . . .

[Bob Eager]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 18/06/13 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
>> I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...
>>
>> Fancy a job? :-)
>>
>> http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-Greetings-
from-GE-Canada
>>
>> http://goo.gl/177Iv
>>
>> Darren
>>
> Golly. I used to write C on one of those..

C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at times.
Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...

And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.

[Bob Eager]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:59:50 +0100, Tim Streater wrote:

> In article <b2bu7eF...@mid.individual.net>,

> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>> > On 18/06/13 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
>> >> I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...
>> >>
>> >> Fancy a job? :-)
>> >>
>> >> http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-
Greetings-
>> from-GE-Canada
>> >>
>> >> http://goo.gl/177Iv
>> >>
>> >> Darren
>> >>
>> > Golly. I used to write C on one of those..
>>
>> C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at
>> times.
>> Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...
>>
>> And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.
>

> If you're going to write assembler for the PDP-11, then I can recommend
> this language:
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL-11>

Yup, seen that. Although I can write it really fast anyway!

That was inspired by PL-360, and I designed a similar one for another
architecture - PL-516. The Honeywell 16 series were quite common at the
time.

[Bob Minchin]

Tim Streater wrote:
> In article <b2bu7eF...@mid.individual.net>,
> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>

>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>> > On 18/06/13 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
>> >> I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...
>> >>
>> >> Fancy a job? :-)
>> >>
>> >>
>> http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-Greetings-
>> from-GE-Canada
>> >>
>> >> http://goo.gl/177Iv
>> >>
>> >> Darren
>> >>
>> > Golly. I used to write C on one of those..
>>
>> C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at
>> times. Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...
>>
>> And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.
>

> If you're going to write assembler for the PDP-11, then I can recommend
> this language:
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL-11>
>

Mid 70s saw me programming PDP11 with ML/1 studying under its Author
Peter Brown and his wife Heather at University of Kent.
I'll still have my notes - "somewhere"

[Bob Eager]

Not another one! I didn't know/remember that. As for notes:

http://www.ml1.org.uk

Peter died a few years ago but Heather is retired and living in Devon.

[newshound]

On 18/06/2013 21:59, Tim Streater wrote:

>>
>> C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at
>> times. Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...
>>
>> And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.
>

> If you're going to write assembler for the PDP-11, then I can recommend
> this language:
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL-11>
>

PDP-11: luxury. I wrote my first serious code on a PDP-8f. I almost
memorised the RIM loader in the end. And I had a colleague who could
read assembler straight off paper tape.

[Bob Eager]

I built two of these:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?
set=a.1035436761956.2007022.1106561883&type=1&l=b3636f373c

(readable by everyone even if not a FB user)

[Bob Eager]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:18:16 +0100, Tim Streater wrote:

> In article <b2bu7eF...@mid.individual.net>,
> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>

>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>> > On 18/06/13 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
>> >> I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...
>> >>
>> >> Fancy a job? :-)
>> >>
>> >> http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-
Greetings-
>> from-GE-Canada
>> >>
>> >> http://goo.gl/177Iv
>> >>
>> >> Darren
>> >>
>> > Golly. I used to write C on one of those..
>>
>> C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at
>> times.
>> Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...
>>
>> And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.
>

> Ever do any BCPL?

I used to run the BCPL User Group.

I did compilers for the DECSystem-10, Elliott 4130, PDP-11, VAX, ICL
2900/3900, MS-DOS....also greatly enhanced a Z80 one. Probably some
others.

[Matty F]

I patched a self-compiling compiler into a PDP-11 in 1982.
Once it worked, of course, it just compiled itself. Unless it had a new bug, so I always had several old copies of the compiler.

[Bob Eager]

This one is in lots of places, but worth reading if you've never seen
it...

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/15/strange-loops-dennis-ritchie-
a/

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

d...@auk.kent.ac.uk (D.M.Chapman) wrote:

>Fancy a job? :-)
>
>http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-Greetings-from-GE-Canada

Hmm, the nuclear industy's still using those - does that give me a warm
feeling all over or - NO, Torness just went bang, my mistake.

Posted in Sunny Edinburgh. Actually, that's not the Sun...

--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to newsre...@wingsandbeaks.org.uk replacing "aaa" by "284".

[Bob Eager]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:55:52 +0100, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:

> d...@auk.kent.ac.uk (D.M.Chapman) wrote:
>
>>Fancy a job? :-)
>>
>>http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-Greetings-
from-GE-Canada
>
> Hmm, the nuclear industy's still using those - does that give me a warm
> feeling all over or - NO, Torness just went bang, my mistake.
>
> Posted in Sunny Edinburgh. Actually, that's not the Sun...

They were pretty reliable. The University of Edinburgh used them as node
processors all over their network. And RJE stations. And frone end
processors for their mainframes.

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:

>On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:55:52 +0100, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:

>> Posted in Sunny Edinburgh. Actually, that's not the Sun...
>
> They were pretty reliable. The University of Edinburgh used them as node
> processors all over their network. And RJE stations. And frone end
> processors for their mainframes.

Fair enough, but they're still OLD electronic devices...

[Bob Eager]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:37:12 +0100, Tim Streater wrote:

> In article <b2c1t2F...@mid.individual.net>,

> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:18:16 +0100, Tim Streater wrote:
>>
>> > In article <b2bu7eF...@mid.individual.net>,
>> > Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>> >
>> >> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > On 18/06/13 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
>> >> >> I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Fancy a job? :-)
>> >> >>
>> >> >> http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-
>> Greetings-
>> >> from-GE-Canada
>> >> >>
>> >> >> http://goo.gl/177Iv
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Darren
>> >> >>
>> >> > Golly. I used to write C on one of those..
>> >>
>> >> C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at
>> >> times.
>> >> Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...
>> >>
>> >> And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.
>> >
>> > Ever do any BCPL?
>>
>> I used to run the BCPL User Group.
>

> Well I might possibly be hornswoggled. I recall going to a BCPL User
> Group meeting at Kent run by "Bob" in about 1983 or so. Martin Richard's
> brother was there IIRC. I was working at SLAC at the time, came along
> with my nephew Stephen who was a bit green then but went on to found
> Eidos.
>
> I joined the BCPL User Group for £5 but then heard nothing more. Were
> you "Bob"? If so ICMFP.

Yup, that would have been me! We did send some stuff out using the subs
we got, but it all died a death. The remainder of the funds were donated
to charity.

This 'previous contact' stuff is getting weird.

There's Darren Chapman (current), Daniele Procida, Andy Champ (son I
think), now we have Bob Minchin. And Huge, Jules Richardson...

And I have met Tim Watts, but that was through this group.

I have probably forgotten some other UKC people too. Anyone?

[Matty F]

On Wednesday, June 19, 2013 9:46:42 AM UTC+12, Bob Eager wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:36:37 -0700, Matty F wrote:
>
>
>
> > I patched a self-compiling compiler into a PDP-11 in 1982.
>
> > Once it worked, of course, it just compiled itself. Unless it had a new
>
> > bug, so I always had several old copies of the compiler.
>
>
>
> This one is in lots of places, but worth reading if you've never seen
>
> it...
>
>
>
> http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/15/strange-loops-dennis-ritchie-a/
>

Thanks, most interesting - a compiler that inserts back-door code when it compiles itself. We had a decompiler, so any backdoor code could be seen. The decompiler was self-aware and refused to decompile itself (so that people couldn't see how it worked).

My compiler was not self-aware, but it did know about all the programs that were allowed to use password fields, and it used to generate different code (a call to a logging routine) for the unauthorised programs that people used to write and leave on people's computers in order to get their login details.

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 18/06/13 22:55, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:
> d...@auk.kent.ac.uk (D.M.Chapman) wrote:
>
>> Fancy a job? :-)
>>
>> http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-Greetings-from-GE-Canada
> Hmm, the nuclear industy's still using those - does that give me a warm
> feeling all over or - NO, Torness just went bang, my mistake.
>
> Posted in Sunny Edinburgh. Actually, that's not the Sun...
>

At least you know they wont be hacked and cant catch viruses.

And the code has had 40 years of testing..

Id say I am actually happy to hear the above

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 18/06/13 23:36, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:
> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:55:52 +0100, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:
>>> Posted in Sunny Edinburgh. Actually, that's not the Sun...
>> They were pretty reliable. The University of Edinburgh used them as node
>> processors all over their network. And RJE stations. And frone end
>> processors for their mainframes.
> Fair enough, but they're still OLD electronic devices...
>

That means they wont have cheap korean capacitors in them.

[Dave Liquorice]

On Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:21:06 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

>>> They were pretty reliable. The University of Edinburgh used them
as
>>> node processors all over their network. And RJE stations. And
frone
>>> end processors for their mainframes.
>>
>> Fair enough, but they're still OLD electronic devices...

Possibly not as OLD as you think, wonkypedia has the PDP-11/93 and
PDP-11/94 introduced in 1990, with production stopping in 1997.

> That means they wont have cheap korean capacitors in them.

Or firmware cores produced by perhaps not the most friendly of
foriegn companies. (BT, Huawei (Chinese) and rather a lot of core
telecommunications infrastructure equipment).

--
Cheers
Dave.

[dennis@home]

I could read punched cards, I never had the use of paper tape so can't.

[John Rumm]

On 18/06/2013 22:31, Bob Eager wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:18:16 +0100, Tim Streater wrote:
>
>> In article <b2bu7eF...@mid.individual.net>,
>> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 18/06/13 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
>>>>> I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...
>>>>>
>>>>> Fancy a job? :-)
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-
> Greetings-
>>> from-GE-Canada
>>>>>
>>>>> http://goo.gl/177Iv
>>>>>
>>>>> Darren
>>>>>
>>>> Golly. I used to write C on one of those..
>>>
>>> C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at
>>> times.
>>> Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...
>>>
>>> And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.
>>
>> Ever do any BCPL?
>
> I used to run the BCPL User Group.
>
> I did compilers for the DECSystem-10, Elliott 4130, PDP-11, VAX, ICL
> 2900/3900, MS-DOS....also greatly enhanced a Z80 one. Probably some
> others.

ISTR my co-director wrote a BCPL compiler for his Atari 800...
originally in Atari BASIC, and then once working adequately enough he
rewrote it in BCPL of course.


--
Cheers,

John.

/=================================================================\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\=================================================================/

[jgharston]

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> D.M.Chapman wrote:
> > I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...
>

> Golly. I used to write C on one of those..

I used to write assembler on those, then wrote an assembler, a
disassembler, an emulator and a small Basic interpreter. Still toying
with it from time to time. Somebody actually emailed me to thank me
for writing the assembler and suggesting a couple of tweeks.

JGH

[Bob Eager]

The Commodore Amiga had an operating system (AmigaDOS) originally written
in BCPL...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPOS

[D.M.Chapman]

In article <kpqi1n$na9$1...@dont-email.me>,

Bob Minchin <bob.minc...@YOURHATntlworld.com> wrote:

>Mid 70s saw me programming PDP11 with ML/1 studying under its Author
>Peter Brown and his wife Heather at University of Kent.
>I'll still have my notes - "somewhere"

Heh, Peter was my project supervisor in my third year in the early 90's.
Modula-3 and C by that time though.

Darren

[WeeBob]

On 18/06/2013 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
> I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...
>
> Fancy a job? :-)
>
> http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-Greetings-from-GE-Canada
>
> http://goo.gl/177Iv
>
> Darren
>

Which OS?

I could do RSX-11 or RSTS/E, but I draw the line at RT-11.

(A fantastic computer... I wish they were all so.)

[D.M.Chapman]

In article <timstreater-2CBD...@news.individual.net>,

Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>In article <b2bu7eF...@mid.individual.net>,

>Ever do any BCPL?

IIRC, I did - it's what I used to hack away on my original old Amiga.
AmigaDOS 1 was written in it IIRC

Darren

[Bob Eager]

ML/I isn't a programming language per se - although I have added it to
the Rosetta Code site and also done some of the simpler tasks there in it.

I did a lot of work with ML/I in my final year (1973!) but it had nothing
to do with my degree work...

I still use it. I did the FreeBSD port.

[D.M.Chapman]

In article <b2eg5rF...@mid.individual.net>,

Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>On Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:27:46 +0000, D.M.Chapman wrote:
>
>> In article <kpqi1n$na9$1...@dont-email.me>,
>> Bob Minchin <bob.minc...@YOURHATntlworld.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Mid 70s saw me programming PDP11 with ML/1 studying under its Author
>>>Peter Brown and his wife Heather at University of Kent.
>>>I'll still have my notes - "somewhere"
>>
>> Heh, Peter was my project supervisor in my third year in the early 90's.
>> Modula-3 and C by that time though.
>
>ML/I isn't a programming language per se - although I have added it to
>the Rosetta Code site and also done some of the simpler tasks there in it.

So I see - just been reading about it on wikipedia (so it *must* be true :-))

Peter Brown was also the reason I ended up working at the University after
my degree. Very odd phone call

"You did maths with computing? Did you like statistics?"
"No, I dropped stats in the first year and took pure maths"
"Ah, shame. But you did the C++ module?"
"nope, took graphicis, 68k asm and the postscript module"
"Ah shame. Do you want a job for 4 weeks doing some statistical analysis
in C++?"
"Yeah, go on then"

That was in 1995. My 4 week contract appears to have lasted well :-) I still
don't like stats, and I'm still not a great C++ developer :-)

Darren

[Bob Eager]

Peter was one of a kind. I heard about ML/I when I was a first year
undergraduate, but no one really seemed to know what it did. So I went
and asked him. He gave me a pile of documents including part of his
thesis, and I never looked back!

His books always had something in them that poked fun at Heather...I'm
sure she got her own back. The first book was describing the facilities
in the IBM macro assembler...

"this is utilitarian rather than beautiful"

("rather the girl you marry, not the one you dream about")

[Vir Campestris]

On 19/06/2013 11:45, Huge wrote:
> I'm not sure if we've had this conversation before, but we may have been
> contemporaneous at UKC - I graduated in 1975 and spent far too much time
> in the Computing Lab and nothing like enough in the Biology Lab, which
> accounts for both the class of my degree and my current career. Prof.
> Brown took my undergrad computing course, which was optional and designed
> for people who already knew how to program. (I'd learned FORTRAN at school.)

Well, as Bob said it was my son who went to UKC, not me,but the rest of
that fits pretty well.

Learning about Android from the inside now.

Andy

[John Rumm]

Indeed, it was my system of choice for many years before having to give
in a go the way of the wintel pc...

In the early days there were still vestiges of the BCPL ancestry in some
of the type definitions used when talking to AmigaDOS (the bit of the
system of tripos extraction). Most development being either C or 68K
assembler in those days, there were wrapper libraries to tidy up the
interfacing. They rewrote it in C after the first release though.

I still miss the joy of Amiga file handling and file system support, way
ahead of dos and windows, and preferable to the *nix way in many respects.

[John Rumm]

On 19/06/2013 19:51, Bob Eager wrote:

Should have also added; The Atari 800 was an early 8 bit micro, produced
many years before the 16/32 bit Amiga or Atari ST range came about.
Although coincidently the chipset designer (Jay Miner) was the same chap
for both.

[Bob Eager]

On Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:05:48 +0100, dave wrote:

> Wrote in assembler on PDP11/10... 34. BASIC and FORTRAN and RATFOR.
> Wrote libs for FORTRAN to call assem. Real Time RT-11 user applications
> AR11 i/o. Also ran "mini" unix, C compiler etc (Not at same time of
> course :-)

I want to put Mini UNIX on one of mine...the 11/23. I also have an 11/84,
11/03, and a Micro PDP-11 (deskside, if you have a bloody big desk).

[Theo Markettos]

John Rumm <see.my.s...@nowhere.null> wrote:
> On 19/06/2013 19:51, Bob Eager wrote:
> > On Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:19:40 +0100, John Rumm wrote:
> >
> > The Commodore Amiga had an operating system (AmigaDOS) originally written
> > in BCPL...
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPOS
>

> In the early days there were still vestiges of the BCPL ancestry in some
> of the type definitions used when talking to AmigaDOS (the bit of the
> system of tripos extraction). Most development being either C or 68K
> assembler in those days, there were wrapper libraries to tidy up the
> interfacing. They rewrote it in C after the first release though.

Would now be the time to introduce:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mr/bcpl4raspi.pdf

Theo

[Windmill]

Huge <Hu...@nowhere.much.invalid> writes:

>On 2013-06-18, Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:55:52 +0100, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:
>>

>>> d...@auk.kent.ac.uk (D.M.Chapman) wrote:
>>>
>>>>Fancy a job? :-)
>>>>
>>>>http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-Greetings-
>> from-GE-Canada
>>>

>>> Hmm, the nuclear industy's still using those - does that give me a warm
>>> feeling all over or - NO, Torness just went bang, my mistake.
>>>

>>> Posted in Sunny Edinburgh. Actually, that's not the Sun...
>>

>> They were pretty reliable. The University of Edinburgh used them as node
>> processors all over their network. And RJE stations. And frone end
>> processors for their mainframes.

>AFAIK, Reuters are still running PDP-11 code all over their network, but
>these days under an emulator.

They don't seem to believe in cutting edge technology (wonder why?). In
Vancouver about 1987 a Reuters PDP8-S (a serial CPU, the ultimate in
RISC) shared the air-conditioned room containing our DEC10 mainframes.
Apparently used by top management who I think had some kind of printer
upstairs in the rarefied heights of the building.

--
Windmill, Til...@Nonetel.com Use t m i l l
J.R.R. Tolkien:- @ O n e t e l . c o m
All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost

[Windmill]

I did have the RIM loader memorised because I had to toggle it in so
often on the switches of an old transistor/resistor/capacitor 'straight 8'.

Probably could have recognised CLA on a paper tape, but wouldn't have
much luck with the rest. JMS I 17 ? 4417 maybe? No, I doubt it.

[bm]

"Theo Markettos" <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:jMd*K-...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...

For 10 year olds?
WOW.

[Bob Eager]

I wouldn't trust quite a few students with BCPL. I wouldn't even trust
them with C, and that's a good deal safer!

[Gordon Henderson]

In article <51c2ad64$0$39857$c3e8da3$de69...@news.astraweb.com>,

WOW. Indeed.

281 pages. Starts with setting up the Pi, installs emacs then you
write helloworld.bcpl ...

25+ years ago I write 1000s and 1000s of lines of BCPL on BBC Micros -
a whole factory automation system utilising a distributed network of
autonomous BBCs talking over Econet. I have Martin Richards books on
the subject, but to present a young person with BCPL today, and expect
them to work through a 280 page book about a language with no commercial
interest in these enlightened times of "apps" just isn't going to happen.

And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

Gordon

[polygonum]

On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:

> On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson <gordon...@drogon.net> wrote:
>
>> And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
>> whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.
>

> That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this thread.
>
> Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite recently. (I
> installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle curiousity, and now
> wonder why I liked it...)
>
> BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I haven't
> had an answer.
>
I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy to
write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made the
challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message Text
Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)

--
Rod

[Bob Eager]

I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But we
dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after three
years.

Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

[polygonum]

On 20/06/2013 10:06, Bob Eager wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:
>
>> On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
>>> On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson <gordon...@drogon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
>>>> whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.
>>>
>>> That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
>>> thread.
>>>
>>> Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
>>> recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
>>> curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)
>>>
>>> BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
>>> haven't had an answer.
>>>
>> I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy to
>> write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made the
>> challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message Text
>> Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)
>
> I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But we
> dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after three
> years.
>
> Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.
>
>
>

A tiny bit of seeing it - can't even remember where!

Did VME/K not have SCL? I had thought the "single high level language
machine" concept which was a contributor to the design of VME had
implied its inclusion in every version!

What I rather liked was that once you saw how things worked, you could
actually handle virtual addresses within SCL - with a couple of trivial
Cobol programs. One of my first complicated apps. was an analyser for
fragmentation of files. Basically going through the FLF and identifying
how long the chains were, how many FLF entries, etc. And, later, an
index sequential file analyser which is how I came to understand the
index structure in detail, and why performance could be so dreadful.
Almost, but never quite actually did, write an I-S file re-indexer. Did
actually write some programs to pre-populate I-S files when the key
ranges could be anticipated and, by so doing, avoid long index overflow
chains.

--
Rod

[Bob Eager]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:47:40 +0100, Tim Streater wrote:

> In article <b2fuvo...@mid.individual.net>,

> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:
>>
>> > On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
>> >> On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson <gordon...@drogon.net> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
>> >>> whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.
>> >>
>> >> That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
>> >> thread.
>> >>
>> >> Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
>> >> recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
>> >> curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)
>> >>
>> >> BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
>> >> haven't had an answer.
>> >>
>> > I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy
>> > to write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made
>> > the challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message
>> > Text Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)
>>
>> I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But we
>> dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after three
>> years.
>>
>> Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.
>

> Never really liked it. These days I use PHP and JavaScript. It's far
> easier with those - no types, really, and some amount of string
> handling.

I use it for command scripts, not web stuff!

[Bob Eager]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:18:12 +0100, polygonum wrote:

> On 20/06/2013 10:06, Bob Eager wrote:
>> On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:
>>
>>> On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
>>>> On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson <gordon...@drogon.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
>>>>> whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.
>>>>
>>>> That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
>>>> thread.
>>>>
>>>> Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
>>>> recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
>>>> curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)
>>>>
>>>> BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
>>>> haven't had an answer.
>>>>
>>> I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy to
>>> write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made the
>>> challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message Text
>>> Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)
>>
>> I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But we
>> dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after three
>> years.
>>
>> Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.
>>
> A tiny bit of seeing it - can't even remember where!

I started with it on OS/2...but it's pretty pervasive. I occasionally use
it on Windows, and a lot on FreeBSD - much nicer than shell scripts fro
complicated things. And there was AmigaREXX...

> Did VME/K not have SCL? I had thought the "single high level language
> machine" concept which was a contributor to the design of VME had
> implied its inclusion in every version!

VME/K was nothing like VME/B - a completely different system. Its control
language (and there wasn't much) was probably closer to GEORGE 3 than
anything else. It was also very immature - our software MTBF (rolling
average over 13 weeks) was typically about 20 hours. The system that
replaced it ("homebrew") had an MTBF of about 2000 hours; it would even
recover from DFC freezes and the like (the DFC was a rebadged 1900 one).

> What I rather liked was that once you saw how things worked, you could
> actually handle virtual addresses within SCL

The system we moved onto treated all files as virtual memory - so you
could make byte changes to files at the command line if you wanted! We
used that system for 7 years before we replaced it with a VAXCluster.

We did get a "free" second OCP and move to proper SMP - which made quite
a difference.

[polygonum]

On 20/06/2013 11:09, Bob Eager wrote:
> VME/K was nothing like VME/B - a completely different system. Its control
> language (and there wasn't much) was probably closer to GEORGE 3 than
> anything else. It was also very immature - our software MTBF (rolling
> average over 13 weeks) was typically about 20 hours. The system that
> replaced it ("homebrew") had an MTBF of about 2000 hours; it would even
> recover from DFC freezes and the like (the DFC was a rebadged 1900 one).

We used to manage weeks MTBF as a rule. Indeed, basic stability improved
quite quickly for us. Certainly DFCs were capable of going mad from time
to time.

I started on GEORGE II! Saw a few bits of 3 and 4 material around the
world but never used them.

My only exposure to VME/K things was when documentation referred to it
and, later, when K was rolled up into VME2900 or whatever actually happened.

--
Rod

[bm]

"Bob Eager" <news...@eager.cx> wrote in message
news:b2g2bv...@mid.individual.net...

LOL you guys. You'll soon be typing in solid mnemonics and acronyms :D
I've only ever used machine code, assembler Z80, 8048 etc (all those hours)
and BASIC.
I remember playing startrek on a Teletype 33 and PDP-9 (i think).

[Bob Eager]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 11:22:47 +0100, polygonum wrote:

> On 20/06/2013 11:09, Bob Eager wrote:
>> VME/K was nothing like VME/B - a completely different system. Its
>> control language (and there wasn't much) was probably closer to GEORGE
>> 3 than anything else. It was also very immature - our software MTBF
>> (rolling average over 13 weeks) was typically about 20 hours. The
>> system that replaced it ("homebrew") had an MTBF of about 2000 hours;
>> it would even recover from DFC freezes and the like (the DFC was a
>> rebadged 1900 one).
>
> We used to manage weeks MTBF as a rule. Indeed, basic stability improved
> quite quickly for us. Certainly DFCs were capable of going mad from time
> to time.

VME/K never really improved. We dumped it when it was going backwards in
functionality.

> I started on GEORGE II! Saw a few bits of 3 and 4 material around the
> world but never used them.

I was a GEORGE II programmer/operator in vacations.

> My only exposure to VME/K things was when documentation referred to it
> and, later, when K was rolled up into VME2900 or whatever actually
> happened.

They dumped VME/K and moved everyone to VME/B, renaming it VME2900. Glad
we never experienced that.

[Bob Eager]

I started with BASIC. Lost count of the number of different assemblers.

> I remember playing startrek on a Teletype 33 and PDP-9 (i think).

Me too, although it was on a PDP-10 at Essex University.

[Steve Firth]

Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 11:22:47 +0100, polygonum wrote:
>
>> On 20/06/2013 11:09, Bob Eager wrote:
>>> VME/K was nothing like VME/B - a completely different system. Its
>>> control language (and there wasn't much) was probably closer to GEORGE
>>> 3 than anything else. It was also very immature - our software MTBF
>>> (rolling average over 13 weeks) was typically about 20 hours. The
>>> system that replaced it ("homebrew") had an MTBF of about 2000 hours;
>>> it would even recover from DFC freezes and the like (the DFC was a
>>> rebadged 1900 one).
>>
>> We used to manage weeks MTBF as a rule. Indeed, basic stability improved
>> quite quickly for us. Certainly DFCs were capable of going mad from time
>> to time.
>
> VME/K never really improved. We dumped it when it was going backwards in
> functionality.
>
>> I started on GEORGE II! Saw a few bits of 3 and 4 material around the
>> world but never used them.
>
> I was a GEORGE II programmer/operator in vacations.

Aieeee! You have reminded me of the horror. Fortunately Manchester also had
CDC and I used the Cyber 170-730 in preference to the ICL thing.

--
<•DarWin><|
_/ _/

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 20/06/13 09:47, Huge wrote:
> On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson <gordon...@drogon.net> wrote:
>

>> And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
>> whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

> That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this thread.

Really?, If someone wants to pay me £100k a year to write z80/8086
assembler, I wouldn't have any trouble getting enthusiastic.

I enjoy writing C so BCPL would presumably only be a subset of that..i
did get a book on it once.

> Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite recently. (I
> installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle curiousity, and now
> wonder why I liked it...)
>
> BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I haven't
> had an answer.
>

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

[D.M.Chapman]

In article <b2fuvo...@mid.individual.net>,
Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:

>On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:
>
>Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

Again, I used to use it on the Amiga - was really useful (don't know how
close ARexx was to plain REXX...)

Darren

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 20/06/13 10:47, Tim Streater wrote:
>
> Never really liked it. These days I use PHP and JavaScript. It's far
> easier with those - no types, really, and some amount of string handling.
>

I find the lack of types the biggest source of bugs and real difficulty
in doing what I want.

Especially in string handling.

And most especially when I wasted two days in discovering that two
javacsript interpretations treated exactly the same web page in two
completely different ways, in one interpreting a number as a string, and
in the other as an integer number.

loose typing hides sloppiness. And makes it impossioble to tell teh
interpreter what it is supposed to do. Yes I rtried all te so called
casting functions.

It reminded me of going back to a bug ridden C compiler for a 6809 that
simply didnt understand pointers to functions. Let alone an array of them

What I wanted was to call a function based on a value in a ( register)
variable.
In assembler. left shift the number by one (on an 8 but machine) take
teh base of the array of addresses of subroutines, add that to the
number, load ta 16 bit register with te value of waht te other 16 bit
register pointd to, push the instruction pointer into the stack and jump
to the address in the last register. Even if it didn't have that
instruction, then push that address in the stack and issue a RET :-)

No way would that compiler do it. I ended up with if (value==0) then
x(); else if (value==1) then y(); ......
I suppose it wasn't such a bad way to code it space wise..

With assembler, you always knew the machine would do what you told it
exactly, barring issue with interrupts.
The moment you put a compiler or interpreter in there, someone elses
bugs and someone else ideas about what your code means are in the way.
If I were running missions critical apps, I might prototype them in a
high level language, but I'd want them written in assembler finally.

[D.M.Chapman]

In article <timstreater-5928...@news.individual.net>,
Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:

>I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.


Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
times)

Darren (awaiting the python fans now :-))

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 20/06/13 14:04, D.M.Chapman wrote:
> In article <timstreater-5928...@news.individual.net>,
> Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>
>> I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.
>
> Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
> times)

PERL?

I have never seen a language that took so long to produce so little of
any use, or ran slower.

> Darren (awaiting the python fans now :-))
>

[John Rumm]

On 20/06/2013 09:18, Gordon Henderson wrote:

> And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
> whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.

That's how I feel about CORAL 66 ;-)

--
Cheers,

John.

/=================================================================\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\=================================================================/

[John Rumm]

On 20/06/2013 10:06, Bob Eager wrote:

> On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:
>
>> On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
>>> On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson <gordon...@drogon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
>>>> whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.
>>>
>>> That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
>>> thread.
>>>
>>> Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
>>> recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
>>> curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)
>>>
>>> BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
>>> haven't had an answer.
>>>
>> I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy to
>> write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made the
>> challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message Text
>> Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)
>
> I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But we
> dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after three
> years.
>
> Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.

Amiga AREXX was quite good fun - most apps had AREXX ports to which to
could direct commands and interact with them programmatically. Very nice
for automating workflows with multiple unrelated programs. A bit like
being able to program office apps with VBS, but since it was a standard
part of the platform, not limited to just a subset of apps.

[John Rumm]

On 20/06/2013 10:47, Tim Streater wrote:
> In article <b2fuvo...@mid.individual.net>,
> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>

>> On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:58:28 +0100, polygonum wrote:
>>
>> > On 20/06/2013 09:47, Huge wrote:
>> >> On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson <gordon...@drogon.net> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
>> >>> whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.
>> >>
>> >> That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this
>> >> thread.
>> >>
>> >> Mind you, I was getting enquiries for MUMPS contracts until quite
>> >> recently. (I installed the Linux MUMPS port recently, out of idle
>> >> curiousity, and now wonder why I liked it...)
>> >>
>> >> BTW, I emailed the guy to (politely) express my incredulity, but I
>> >> haven't had an answer.
>> >>
>> > I enjoyed my time using the VME/B SCL language. Would be very happy to
>> > write some more things in it! Limited in some ways but that made the
>> > challenges interesting. Plus a few bits and pieces in Message Text
>> > Modules... And the odd extra functionality crafted in Cobol. :-)
>>
>> I never got to use SCL because we had VME/K (one of the few...). But
>> we dumped VME/K in favour of a third party operating system, after
>> three years.
>>
>> Ever tried REXX? IBM's rough equivalent. I use it a lot.
>

> Never really liked it. These days I use PHP and JavaScript. It's far
> easier with those - no types, really, and some amount of string handling.

Never liked weakly typed language myself... ;-)

[John Rumm]

On 20/06/2013 12:09, Bob Eager wrote:

> I started with BASIC. Lost count of the number of different assemblers.

I remember having a slightly strange conversation with with an IBM type
at a recruitment exhibition once many years ago... they had a big sign
up saying Assembler programmers wanted. So I thought I would find out a
bit more, gave them a CV to look at, and after a few minutes perusal,
she said "but I can't see any assembler experience here?". So I directed
her at the section titled "Low level languages" and a moderately long
list of processor architectures. Realisation slowly dawned that to IBM
people "Assembler" was an IBM specific technology, and is apparently the
only low level language that exists - she had absolutely no concept that
assembler was a generic term, or that the concepts of machine languages
were similar across platforms or even it seems, that "other" computers
even had machine languages. ;-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 20/06/13 15:00, Tim Streater wrote:
> In article <kpuuko$ku6$2...@dont-email.me>,

> d...@auk.kent.ac.uk (D.M.Chapman) wrote:
>
>> In article <timstreater-5928...@news.individual.net>,
>> Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>>
>> >I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.
>>
>> Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
>> times)
>

> No, perl is even worse than bash etc. Perl's designers need a good smack.
>
You mean someone actually DESIGNED it?

It always looked to me like some sweaty nerds late night output
surrounded by beer cans and empty pizza boxes where at 3 a.m. he would
jerk off, and go to bed and say 'wow that would be a really cool way of
doing something simple in a massively complicated and impressive way:
I'll add that tomorow after my dull job testing banking software."

[Gordon Henderson]

In article <kpuuko$ku6$2...@dont-email.me>,

D.M.Chapman <d...@auk.kent.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <timstreater-5928...@news.individual.net>,
>Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>
>>I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.
>
>Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
>times)

The correct answer for any one person is to use what they're most
comfortable with. I use PHP as a scripting language too - a lot of my
automated billing software is written in PHP - as a command liney script
rather than a web backend. It was easier than writing it in C.

Gordon

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 20/06/13 15:14, Huge wrote:

> On 2013-06-20, Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>> In article <kpuuko$ku6$2...@dont-email.me>,
>> d...@auk.kent.ac.uk (D.M.Chapman) wrote:
>>

>>> In article <timstreater-5928...@news.individual.net>,
>>> Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.
>>> Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
>>> times)

>> No, perl is even worse than bash etc. Perl's designers need a good smack.

> That would be an ecumenical matter.
>
> But anyone who thinks PHP is a good idea is on pretty dodgy ground. :o)
>
>
Id say its better than perl or bash...I tend to do things in PHP until
I run into the limits of it, and then spend longer, but produce a better
job, in C.

I cant say I have ever felt the need to learn PERL or bash. either its
so simple the most basic bash covers it, or its so complicated it would
take me far longer to drive a new language than write it in one I
already know.

[Gordon Henderson]

In article <kputp4$b2b$1...@news.albasani.net>,

The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>On 20/06/13 09:47, Huge wrote:
>> On 2013-06-20, Gordon Henderson <gordon...@drogon.net> wrote:
>>
>>> And while I do enjoy a bit of "retro" computing, I have no yearning
>>> whatsoever to go back and write another BCPL program.
>> That's how I feel about the PDP-11 programming job that started this thread.
>
>Really?, If someone wants to pay me £100k a year to write z80/8086
>assembler, I wouldn't have any trouble getting enthusiastic.
>
>I enjoy writing C so BCPL would presumably only be a subset of that..i
>did get a book on it once.

I went from C (learned on a PDP11/40 to keep it relevant ;-) to BCPL,
however there wasn't much choice - no decent C compiler for the Beeb at
the time, nor the Z80 that was the control systems predecessor. I did a
lot in Pascal (on the Z80 system, and Apple) before I saw the light and
went for the Beebs for that project though...

I'm sure that if I had to, I could pickup BCPL again, but fortunately
I don't have to.

Gordon

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 20 June 2013 14:04 D.M.Chapman wrote in uk.d-i-y:

> In article <timstreater-5928...@news.individual.net>,
> Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>
>>I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.
>
>
> Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
> times)

+1

> Darren (awaiting the python fans now :-))

Meh...

--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://squiddy.blog.dionic.net/

http://www.sensorly.com/ Crowd mapping of 2G/3G/4G mobile signal coverage

Reading this on the web? See:
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Usenet

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 20 June 2013 14:15 The Natural Philosopher wrote in uk.d-i-y:

> On 20/06/13 14:04, D.M.Chapman wrote:
>> In article <timstreater-5928...@news.individual.net>,
>> Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.
>>
>> Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
>> times)
>
> PERL?
>
> I have never seen a language that took so long to produce so little of
> any use, or ran slower.
>

I wrote an entire application made up of 5 daemons in Perl and it was plenty
fast enough, clean and *very* reliable. If Perl is "wrong" then Tomcat/Java
apps must be really wrong as my perl was lighter, easier to hack on and way
faster than any Tomcat app I have every seen.

I also use it for all manner of utility programs from LDAP/Kerberos clients
to XML::RPC to general reporting (wot it was really designed for).

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 20 June 2013 15:00 Tim Streater wrote in uk.d-i-y:

> In article <kpuuko$ku6$2...@dont-email.me>,
> d...@auk.kent.ac.uk (D.M.Chapman) wrote:
>

>> In article <timstreater-5928...@news.individual.net>,
>> Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>>
>> >I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.
>>
>> Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
>> times)
>

> No, perl is even worse than bash etc. Perl's designers need a good smack.
>

No they don't. PHP designers (if you can call them that) need a good smack.

Perl has a well defined and elegant syntax. "Compact" != "Bad"

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 20 June 2013 15:26 The Natural Philosopher wrote in uk.d-i-y:

> On 20/06/13 15:14, Huge wrote:
>> On 2013-06-20, Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>>> In article <kpuuko$ku6$2...@dont-email.me>,
>>> d...@auk.kent.ac.uk (D.M.Chapman) wrote:
>>>
>>>> In article <timstreater-5928...@news.individual.net>,
>>>> Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.
>>>> Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash
>>>> at times)
>>> No, perl is even worse than bash etc. Perl's designers need a good
>>> smack.
>> That would be an ecumenical matter.
>>
>> But anyone who thinks PHP is a good idea is on pretty dodgy ground. :o)
>>
>>
> Id say its better than perl or bash...

http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

[Tim Watts]

On Thursday 20 June 2013 15:12 The Natural Philosopher wrote in uk.d-i-y:

> On 20/06/13 15:00, Tim Streater wrote:
>> In article <kpuuko$ku6$2...@dont-email.me>,
>> d...@auk.kent.ac.uk (D.M.Chapman) wrote:
>>
>>> In article <timstreater-5928...@news.individual.net>,
>>> Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> >I use PHP for command scripts, too. Shell stuff is for the birds.
>>>
>>> Urghhh! Perl is the correct answer for that stuff (with a bit of bash at
>>> times)
>>
>> No, perl is even worse than bash etc. Perl's designers need a good smack.
>>
> You mean someone actually DESIGNED it?
>

Don't insult Larry Wall... He's forgotten more than some language designers
ever knew.

[Bob Eager]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 14:49:57 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

> On 20/06/2013 12:09, Bob Eager wrote:
>
>> I started with BASIC. Lost count of the number of different assemblers.
>
> I remember having a slightly strange conversation with with an IBM type
> at a recruitment exhibition once many years ago... they had a big sign
> up saying Assembler programmers wanted. So I thought I would find out a
> bit more, gave them a CV to look at, and after a few minutes perusal,
> she said "but I can't see any assembler experience here?". So I directed
> her at the section titled "Low level languages" and a moderately long
> list of processor architectures. Realisation slowly dawned that to IBM
> people "Assembler" was an IBM specific technology, and is apparently the
> only low level language that exists - she had absolutely no concept that
> assembler was a generic term, or that the concepts of machine languages
> were similar across platforms or even it seems, that "other" computers
> even had machine languages. ;-)

Yes, the clue was always in the capitalisation - which wasn't that
obvious especially when it appeared at the start of a sentence!

IBM did that with other generic terms - JCL and VM being the most
commonly confused.

[Bob Eager]

BCPL was untyped!

[Bob Minchin]

Huge wrote:

> On 2013-06-18, Bob Minchin <bob.minc...@YOURHATntlworld.com> wrote:
>> Tim Streater wrote:

>>> In article <b2bu7eF...@mid.individual.net>,
>>> Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:45:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 18/06/13 20:01, D.M.Chapman wrote:
>>>>>> I seem to remember there were a few PDP-11 fans on here...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Fancy a job? :-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>> http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?37827-Greetings-
>>>> from-GE-Canada
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://goo.gl/177Iv
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Darren
>>>>>>
>>>>> Golly. I used to write C on one of those..
>>>>
>>>> C ? Pah! I started on them in assembler, but did hand assembly at
>>>> times. Not to mention compilers for a couple of languages...
>>>>
>>>> And I have four PDP-11s right here anyway.
>>>
>>> If you're going to write assembler for the PDP-11, then I can recommend
>>> this language:
>>>
>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL-11>
>>>
>> Mid 70s saw me programming PDP11 with ML/1 studying under its Author
>> Peter Brown and his wife Heather at University of Kent.
>> I'll still have my notes - "somewhere"
>
> I'm not sure if we've had this conversation before, but we may have been
> contemporaneous at UKC - I graduated in 1975 and spent far too much time
> in the Computing Lab and nothing like enough in the Biology Lab, which
> accounts for both the class of my degree and my current career. Prof.
> Brown took my undergrad computing course, which was optional and designed
> for people who already knew how to program. (I'd learned FORTRAN at school.)
>
>
I was there from 72-75 as an undergraduate. I was up the other end of
the Natural Sciences intake spectrum. I initially signed up for
Electronics but changed to Computing and Cybernetics at the end of the
first year.
I vaguely remember someone called Hugh in Eliot College but I think he
was a mathematician.

Bob

[Bob Eager]

Did you know Tony West? Now CTO at Cisco in San Jose.

[D.M.Chapman]

In article <timstreater-9FE9...@news.individual.net>,
Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:
>
>Are you mad? Have you taken complete leave of your senses? Have you gone
>completely hatstand? (and similar expressions of astonishment ad
>nauseam).

*boggles*

>The only real place where you can criticise PHP is that the names of the
>library functions are a bit of a mess. Well, yawn.

The *only* place??? Are you mad??

How about changing parameter ordering on a minor release?

register globals? How was that ever a good idea/design?

We logged a bug with php (well, we've logged many) and got told by a
developer that "we should expect problems if we use an exotic system
like Solaris"

Just a few off the top of my head :-) I'm sure I can think of pages and
pages of criticism for PHP if I try

You've seen the double claw hammer? :-)

> Meanwhile perl seems
>to need a variety of characters to introduce different things such as
>simple variable, strings, arrays, etc, not to mention witticisms such as
>$_ and friends. These are shortcuts that you have to learn like Latin
>conjugation and hic, haec, hoc. Just as much rhyme and reason.

It does have a learning cliff, but it's not that high. Also, most of those
odd variables have friendly names these days :)

CPAN has it's issues, but PEAR? Oh dear...

Still, I'm posting this using rn so I guess that puts be firmly in the
Perl camp...

Darren

[D.M.Chapman]

In article <timstreater-D0B5...@news.individual.net>,
Tim Streater <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote:

>Anyway, this is a futile discussion. I suggest we declare a score-draw
>and go off to the pub.

Sounds like a plan

*opens beer*

[Bob Minchin]

No, I don't recall that name. There was (is!) a Tony Jeffree and I am
still in touch with him.
Living in the college environment you tended to know the group of people
in the same college, meeting over meals and in the college socially and
a second group on your course - I think there were less than 20 on my
course.

[Bob Eager]

I think he was the year before you; there were about four. Still in
contact with him and one other, although I was doing Electronics at the
time.

[John Rumm]

Not too surprising when you look at how the original K&R style C turned
out... did not like that much either until it at least got as far as
ANSI and had typed parameters ;-)

[Bob Eager]

Surely it had typed parameters before that....just not in the actual
parameter list.

[Vir Campestris]

On 20/06/2013 16:37, Tim Watts wrote:
> Perl has a well defined and elegant syntax. "Compact" != "Bad"

Did you ever see APL?

Andy

[Vir Campestris]

On 20/06/2013 11:22, polygonum wrote:
> My only exposure to VME/K things was when documentation referred to it
> and, later, when K was rolled up into VME2900 or whatever actually
> happened.

It was canned. Killed completely and not kept at all. Which was a pity,
because it was going from the time Bob knew it wehre it fell into a heap
all the time (and should have been killed) to a half-decent O/S with an
order book bigger than the installed base.

BTW Bob, do you recall which version you used?

Rumours reached my ears that everyone got shoved over the B, with some
free memory to ease the pain. The story given to mgmt was I heard that
you couldn't convert some of the B users to K, because they had things
like CAFS and DAP. But you could convert all the K users with a megabyte
of memory and a disc.

Rumour was it turned out to be double the memory (which wasn't always a
meg) and 10% on the CPU. Which wasn't always possible.

My first job was K development. I suppose it's like that thing of you
never forget your first girlfriend!

Andy

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Yes; I spent summer 1981 (before my last Uni year) working for IBM in
Edinburgh, doing some programming. I can't remember what they wanted me to
do in APL, but as well as that - to make it all much easier to do - I wrote
a basic full-screen editor (like a very simple Xedit) for APL function
definitions.

I also converted a FORTRAN program from one dialect to another so that a
potential customer could see how fast (or not) their program would run on a
particular IBM machine - I think maybe a 4341.

Harking back to an earlier topic here, I also had the good fortune to meet
Peter Brown, but only once, when he gave a guest lecture in the Comp Sci
dept at St Andrews Uni. I always liked his 'Writing Interactive Compilers
and Interpreters' book.

--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to newsre...@wingsandbeaks.org.uk replacing "aaa" by "284".

[Bob Eager]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 21:09:57 +0100, Vir Campestris wrote:

> On 20/06/2013 11:22, polygonum wrote:
>> My only exposure to VME/K things was when documentation referred to it
>> and, later, when K was rolled up into VME2900 or whatever actually
>> happened.
>
> It was canned. Killed completely and not kept at all. Which was a pity,
> because it was going from the time Bob knew it wehre it fell into a heap
> all the time (and should have been killed) to a half-decent O/S with an
> order book bigger than the installed base.
>
> BTW Bob, do you recall which version you used?

SV12 was the last. The problem we had was that SV13 was going to have
major changes, which removed a lot of management features that we really
needed in a university environment. And it still didn't have a proper
backup system. We had after all been waiting over three years for a
reliable, fault tolerant system.

That's when we found an alternative. Which also had a proper backup
system! We managed to write a program to transfer the contents of the
filestore disk-to-disk, so the changeover was relatively painless.

> Rumours reached my ears that everyone got shoved over the B, with some
> free memory to ease the pain.

That's what I heard.

> The story given to mgmt was I heard that
> you couldn't convert some of the B users to K, because they had things
> like CAFS and DAP. But you could convert all the K users with a megabyte
> of memory and a disc.

Indeed. In fact K performed so badly for us that we were given free
upgrades of eight EDS100s to eight EDS200s, and 1MB to 2MB of memory. And
(for some reason) a second GPC.

It also didn't have any real networking support apart from a terminal
server. Not that we could afford anyway.

> My first job was K development. I suppose it's like that thing of you
> never forget your first girlfriend!

I'll just...never forget it! I was in charge of testing K when it
arrived, and sometimes I'd submit 200 fault reports in a week.

I also got to mastermind the changeover to the replacement operating
system eventually.

[Bob Eager]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 21:25:00 +0100, Jeremy Nicoll - news posts wrote:

> Harking back to an earlier topic here, I also had the good fortune to
> meet Peter Brown, but only once, when he gave a guest lecture in the
> Comp Sci dept at St Andrews Uni. I always liked his 'Writing
> Interactive Compilers and Interpreters' book.

I think I got a credit at the start of that one. He also managed to get a
dig at Heather into that one...he thanked her for prooof reading it, and
said that the errors had been burned away by the acid dripping from her
tongue...

[D.M.Chapman]

In article <b2h8atF...@mid.individual.net>,

Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>> Interactive Compilers and Interpreters' book.
>
>I think I got a credit at the start of that one. He also managed to get a
>dig at Heather into that one...he thanked her for prooof reading it, and
>said that the errors had been burned away by the acid dripping from her
>tongue...

Hmmm... pretty sure he had that in the Unix book. Along with the dedication
"To H, half hard, half soft" or similar.

Still got a copy somewhere in the office IIRC, will hunt tomorrow :)

I still remember the day we had two lectures following one another. First
was Heather lecturing on SGML (I think) and that was followed by Peter
about Guide. Heather had almost lost her voice and gave up half way through.

We all arrived early at Peters lecture and when we told him why we were
early he decided to head home early to get the most of the peace and quiet.

Darren