[TUHS] Re: History of non-Bell C compilers?

[Marc Rochkind <mrochkind@gmail.com>]

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I got my first  computer in 1981, when I was still at Bell Labs. A Zenith,
as I recall, running CP/M 80. There was a C-like compiler, but it was a
subset. I think that computer had a z80 chip, so it wasn't an x86.

Then I got an IBM PC in 1982, with an 8088 (16-bit word, 8-bit bus), and
I'm pretty sure the first real C compiler was Lattice C. Microsoft picked
it up and called it Microsoft C. Then, maybe a couple of years later, they
came out with their own C compiler, written in-house, I think. (As I
recall, I got my Lattice C compiler, which was very expensive, for free for
writing a review for BYTE Magazine, but I can't find the review in my
office or online, so maybe I'm imagining that. Or maybe I never finished
the review or they didn't print it.)

I had an early Macintosh, too, and used Lightspeed C. I think it was
essentially complete C. It was a whole IDE, incredibly fast, and I used it
for commercial applications for the Mac. I continued to use that until
Apple bought Next and revised their product line to use NextStep. Then I
used what Apple had, but it was Objective-C (blend of Smalltalk and C)
which is what you wrote NextStep apps in. I think we used Objective-C for
Mac work until the early 1990s, when I stopped writing native Mac apps.

Lots of missing details here, I'm sure.

The August 1983 issue of BYTE Magazine was all about C, and has three
articles reviewing C compilers for CP/M 86, the IBM PC, and CP/M 80.
There's also an article called "The C Language and Models for Systems
Programming" by two guys who know about that stuff,  Stephen C. Johnson and
Brian W. Kernighan. Here's a link to the issue:
https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-08

Marc

On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 4:45 PM Tom Lyon <pugs78@gmail.com> wrote:

> I know of Plauger as a Kernighan co-author, so I did a search on AbeBooks
> and found - a lot of science fiction!  Must investigate.
>
> On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 3:27 PM Luther Johnson <
> luther.johnson@makerlisp.com> wrote:
>
>> Oops, misspelled Mr. Plauger's name, pardon me, that's "P.J. Plauger".
>>
>> On 03/07/2024 04:24 PM, Luther Johnson wrote:
>> > I don't have any personal tales, but I remember that P.J. Plaugher's
>> > company, "Whitesmiths", C compiler was an early, and influential,
>> > non-AT&T C compiler.
>> >
>> > On 03/07/2024 04:14 PM, Tom Lyon wrote:
>> >> For no good reason, I've been wondering about the early history of C
>> >> compilers that were not derived from Ritchie, Johnson, and Snyder at
>> >> Bell.  Especially for x86. Anyone have tales?
>> >> Were any of those compilers ever used to port UNIX?
>> >
>>
>>

-- 
*My new email address is mrochkind@gmail.com <mrochkind@gmail.com>*

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