_______ __ _______
| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Whitesmiths C compiler: One of the earliest commercial C compilers available
ChrisMarshallNY wrote 31 min ago:
For the first fifteen years or so, of my career, I used Whitesmiths
indenting (as opposed to the K&R that I've been using since). I never
knew where it came from. It was just a name, to me.
You can see it, if you look at the code.
HocusLocus wrote 35 min ago:
Turbo Pascal: One of the earliest bang it out languages that compiled
so tightly and quickly it was like a reduced instruction set with
benefits
b0a04gl wrote 6 hours 59 min ago:
file layout is the interface here lol you can literally walk the
pipeline.. lexer parser codegen linker all just sit where they should.
the dir was the flow. back then structure = filesystem. we can cd trace
src to bin just by lookin at folders
mzs wrote 9 hours 46 min ago:
still have code with this indentation style here:
URI [1]: https://github.com/hansake/Whitesmiths-C-compiler/blob/main/c_...
DamonHD wrote 7 hours 17 min ago:
I have always used (ie since the mid '80s) something like WS layout
for C and its descendants. Only much later did I hear that name for
it. Often unfashionable, but I have also been a magazine editor, and
like the braces to visually lead the eye down the edge of the code
that they surround, like a non-indented text para.
mzs wrote 6 hours 47 min ago:
I prefer the Sun extensions to Indian Hill for grepability but I
see the appeal especially to folks that came from pascal. Look
closely at the example echo.c, thats not "#include " ;) We still
have this included in lots of code where I work since it dates from
around 1980:
% grep '/\*' std.h
/* std.h header file to allow use of Whitesmiths pseudo
classes/types. */
/* the pseudo storage classes
/* the pseudo types
/* system parameters
%
And yes for me there are ~600 files I still regularly work in
written in WS style.
ok123456 wrote 10 hours 0 min ago:
Take a look at some of his other repositories. There's one that has
basically every CP/M programming tool.
chubot wrote 10 hours 35 min ago:
Replaying a good comment from lobsters! [1] > You might also enjoy the
Advent Of Computing podcast episode about IDRIS, Whitesmithsâ UNIX
clone. History of the company and the compiler included, because
theyâre all related. [2]
URI [1]: https://lobste.rs/s/ybarpv/whitesmiths_c_compiler_one_earliest
URI [2]: https://adventofcomputing.com/
URI [3]: https://youtu.be/UeZpKgtRfx0
jockm wrote 11 hours 20 min ago:
I hope one day the source for Whitesmiths unix clone Idris gets
released. IIRC it was the first unix clone, and it would just be nice
to have that preserved for history
tomsmeding wrote 7 hours 6 min ago:
Seems you're in luck! Clicking around on the github page of the
posted link, one finds [1] .
URI [1]: https://github.com/hansake/Whitesmiths-Idris-OS
icedchai wrote 4 hours 22 min ago:
Those look like binaries, not source code?
jockm wrote 4 hours 23 min ago:
That is just the binaries, unless I am very much mistaken. I was
(trying to) refer to the sources as well
secondcoming wrote 11 hours 27 min ago:
I remember seeing his name in some Windows header files and always
wondered who that person was. Cool.
SeanCline wrote 8 hours 14 min ago:
Specifically, you'll find his name in the C++ Standard Library
headers. Microsoft licensed their standard library from Dinkumware.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._Plauger#Dinkumware
mrec wrote 7 hours 17 min ago:
Oh wow, I never knew he was an award-winning SF author too. I
remember a couple of exchanges with him on the
comp.lang.c++.moderated group back in the day.
vaxman wrote 1 day ago:
Mind. Blown.
On DEC systems, I programmed using FORTRAN, BLISS, MACRO and (on GiGi
and RSTS/E) in BASIC for a long time.. then one day the Bell Labs
spinoff I worked for bought a Whitesmithâs C license for the
VAXcluster (for probably oodles of money) and I was transferred into a
group headed by the guy who wrote UNIXâs malloc implementation a long
time before I came along. He hated VMS as much as I hated C. He
couldnât use UNIX because it only ran on dogshit computers. I
couldnât use FORTRAN because someone read a book that said C was
cool. We all carried around our K&R pamphlet books and the
Whitesmithâs manual (which the Indian workers would mispronounce with
three syllables lol). The compiler had all kinds of issues on VMS.
Eventually, DEC released VAX-11 C (still have my little 5x7â orange
book) and that was enough to make me give up (the truly wonderful) VAX
FORTRAN and MACRO/BLISS compilers. My home setup (it was not common for
anyone to have home setups then, even programmers) was all assembler,
FORTH, Pascal and BASIC but with the shift to C at work, I finally sold
a kidney and bought Lattice C and later Aztec C and after moving to the
Mac (as I sealed my Amigas into the boxes in the garage where they
remain to this day), MPW C, THINK C and CodeWarrior C, MS Visual C,
before Yggdrasil Linuxâ¦GNU C, then GNU Objective C and now (needle
scratch silence) Swift? All started with Whitesmithâs Câ¦
Scubabear68 wrote 2 hours 48 min ago:
I was lucky enough to work for Manx Software starting, I believe, in
1988. So I not only had free access to all of the Aztec C products,
but also learned tremendous amounts from being able to see and work
on the source code itself.
I also ended up being a VI guy because Manx had their own vi
implementationâ¦
Memories indeed.
B1FF_PSUVM wrote 7 hours 19 min ago:
> Eventually, DEC released VAX-11 C
A bit raw, with floating point bugs in libm ...
robinsonb5 wrote 8 hours 14 min ago:
If any of those Amigas had a battery backed clock, please remove the
batteries at the earliest opportunity and neutralise the area
affected by any leakage with a mild acid such as lemon juice. They'll
almost certainly have leaked by now but the longer it's left the
worse the damage will be.
burnt-resistor wrote 22 min ago:
By now, that's the least of the concerns. If they use linear PSUs
with massive electrolytic capacitors, I'll bet they're toast (dried
or leaking, and so far outside of spec). And anywhere with any
amount of humidity without desiccant packets and sealed in plastic
will experience corrosion of PCBs and connectors.
bitwize wrote 2 hours 15 min ago:
When I bought my Amiga, its clock battery had been replaced by a
mount for a coin battery. That machine had received some serious
love.
gjvc wrote 5 hours 38 min ago:
Absolutely this. The Varta batteries of the 1990s have inflicted
awful irrepebal damage on many systems of the time. Especially sad
when people thought they were keeping them safe in their attic and
then unpacked them to find the motherboard full of dead components.
eej71 wrote 8 hours 43 min ago:
I'm old. I instantly recognized your username.
sizzzzlerz wrote 4 days ago:
That brings back some memories from my early days. I worked on a
project that had decided to use the newish C language for a 68000-based
system. They chose Whitesmith compiler for it, probably because it was
the only one available. For some reason, I was selected to attend a
class on learning C and became responsible for installing the compiler
and assisting the other engineers on using it. The project was
ultimately successful but I don't recall what issues we had with it. I
do remember contacting Whitesmith a couple of times to resolve some
problems. I guess it possible I was talking directly to P.J. Plauger
himself, although, at that time, I would have had no idea who he was.
julian55 wrote 4 hours 55 min ago:
It brings back memories for me too. This compiler was my first
introduction to C, before that I'd used Pascal or Fortran. I worked
on Z80 but we also had a 68K project which ran Whitesmith's Idris
UNIX clone before we got real System III ported
TomMasz wrote 7 hours 4 min ago:
I remember using that compiler for M68K in the mid-80s,
cross-compiling on a DEC Vax. The debug monitor we were using only
displayed hex, no disassembly. The compiler was so predictable that I
could locate the memory location for any C statement easily. It made
patching code in memory a simple task.
vaxman wrote 1 day ago:
..directly while also visualizing his neck veins xD
DIR <- back to front page