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From: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca>
Subject: Re: [9fans] new compilers
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 00:41:33 -0800
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 215854e4-ead1-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

> I have fond memories of threatining the Sun sales sloths with death
> and worse if they didn't at least ship .h files after they
> unbundled the C compiler.  Sun is as responsible for GCC as the
> AT&T lawyers are responsible for Linux.

Ignoring the lawyers, gcc out-ran all of the Sun compilers for
years.  It wasn't until ~2001 when I saw demonstrable proof that the
Sun compilers were ready to outrun the GNU bloatationiousness.  But
meanwhile, Sun's hubris lead to others not only unbundling, but
actually spending that money on compiler design!  I still love the
mipsco compilers that quote chapter and verse of the ANSI spec.  And
they worked even before DEC got MIPSed.  Oh wait, that was the
*other* DEC CPU.  (6,7,8,10,VAX,MIPS,???)  Still, the compiler worked
across all of them.