Re: What micros do you actually hate to work with?

On Thu, 12 Oct 2006 05:48:09 +0000, Neil wrote:
C predates the x86.

Perhaps true in an absolute sense (if early internal development of C
counts), but the 8086 and the first edition of the K&R C book were both
introduced to the public at about the same time (1978). There is much in
the 8086 architecture that is more Pascal-flavoured than C-flavoured, such
as the full-strength subroutine call instructions, and segmented memory
architecture. It isn't terribly likely that C was an influence (or at
least not a strong one) on the design of the 8086. But I'm surmising: I
wasn't there.

Remember HLLs where made by ASM programmers who did not like the limits
of ASM.

That's not strictly true, either, unless you consider effort reqired to
produce code to be a limit. Fortran was mostly developed so that a wider
pool of people could program the early computers. Ultimately HLLs produce
the code using the same alphabet of instructions as assembly language,
with perhaps a restricted vocabulary, or use of idiom. So the
functionality limit is the other way around. [Re: idiom: you can't write
a multiple-entry-point subroutine in C (or most HLLs), but this is/was
quite common in assembly language.]

Remember their memory was more limited than some low end single
chip micros are today.

Sure. Most of them had disks and other on- or near-line storage, though,
and people were quite prepared to wait for multi-phase processing to
happen, mostly through overlays or batch programs.

--
Andrew

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