From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <200310101200.h9AC0A1c031067@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Subject: Re: [9fans] My Eu paper, mark 2 Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 08:58:55 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 6d3189a8-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Laura Creighton wrote: > ... C was made by X people, > Y helping and C++ by Q people, R people helping. > Anybody here know what X Y Q R are? Actually small armies did become involved. The original versions of C and C++ were designed by single individuals, and implemented by the same (although C++ required a C implementation); there is a lot of support structure (linkers, libraries, debuggers, etc.) that dragged in other contributors. For example Mike Lesk worked on the early version of a portable I/O library and Steve Johnson worked on the Portable C Compiler. By the time C was "commercial" there were several people working on it and its surrounding software generation system. And of course the languages kept growing, with contributions one way or another by hundreds. I think you could reasonably say that a general- purpose programming language can be designed and implemented in a limited context by one person (there are other historical examples), but it takes significantly more resources to turn it into an industrial-strength product.