Re: How did C++ beat the competition?

From: Claudio Puviani (puviani_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 03/15/04 

Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:13:40 GMT

"Eric" <ericmuttta@email.com> wrote
> > >I find myself marvelling at how this "new" technology was in the
> > >making quite a number of years ago.
> >
> > Even before 98/99. I probably first heard of it around 92 or 93.
>
> 92 or 93???!!! Whoa! So how do they manage to keep it so quiet for so
> long? I started getting glimpses of C# back in 2000, and .NET didn't
> really "happen" for me until early 2003 when I managed to find a Beta
> copy somewhere. I continue to marvel :-)

Microsoft's first C++ compiler, 7.0, actually generated a form of p-code that
was interpreted at runtime by a VM that was packaged in the executable (it could
also generate native code and mix native code and p-code in a single
executable). At first, the p-code got extremely bad reception in the developer
community because people just assumed that it would slow things down too much,
so Microsoft simply stopped talking about it. I don't know how many versions
later the feature was removed (if it ever was). I'm just extrapolating, but it's
my guess that Microsoft never let this technology die and that this was the
direct precursor to .NET.

As a side note, I found it amusing that Microsoft presented their native/p-code
hybrid as a ground-breaking innovation since Alcor C and Alcor Pascal had done
the same thing on TRS-80s many years before that.

Claudio Puviani

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