From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [50.116.15.146]) by inbox.vuxu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8B6882CA7D for ; Tue, 1 Oct 2024 15:32:39 +0200 (CEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 05875436BE; Tue, 1 Oct 2024 23:32:35 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id AF45A4325F for ; Tue, 1 Oct 2024 23:32:31 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 6275C35E98C; Tue, 1 Oct 2024 06:32:31 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2024 06:32:31 -0700 From: Larry McVoy To: arnold@skeeve.com Message-ID: <20241001133231.GE13777@mcvoy.com> References: <20240928165812.4uyturluj4dsuwef@illithid> <20240928180138.aygrwqdwrvq3n6xt@illithid> <202410011313.491DD4ac421643@freefriends.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <202410011313.491DD4ac421643@freefriends.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Message-ID-Hash: 2EAC7AHGIDTVEWGJJYCKNL6KM26S6PTI X-Message-ID-Hash: 2EAC7AHGIDTVEWGJJYCKNL6KM26S6PTI X-MailFrom: lm@mcvoy.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: tuhs@tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Minimum Array Sizes in 16 bit C (was Maximum) List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Tue, Oct 01, 2024 at 07:13:04AM -0600, arnold@skeeve.com wrote: > Would the word have been better off if Ada had caught on everywhere? > Probably. When I was in grad school studying language design, circa 1982, > it was expected to do so. But the language was VERY challenging for > compiler writers. Huh. Rob Netzer and I, as grad students, took cs701 and cs702 at UW Madison. It was the compilers course (701) and the really hard compilers course (702) at the time. The first course was to write a compiler for a subset of Ada and the second on increased the subset to be almost complete. We were supposed to do it on an IBM mainframe because the professor had his own version of lex/yacc there. Rob had a 3b1 and asked if we could do it there if he rewrote the parser stuff. Prof said sure. In one semester we had a compiler, no optimizer and not much in the way of graceful error handling, but it compiled stuff that ran. We did all of Ada other than late binding of variables (I think that was Ada's templates) and threads and probably some other stuff I don't remember. Rob is pretty smart, went on to be a tenured prof at Brown before going back to industry. Maybe he did all the heavy lifting, but I didn't find that project to very challenging. Did I miss something? > This is a very important, key point. As more and more people have > entered the field, the quality / education / knowledge / whatever > has gone down. What was normal to learn and use back in 1983 is > now too difficult for many, if not most, people, even good ones, in > the field now. > > But for me, and I think others of my vintage, this state of affairs > seems sad. 100% agree. A sharp young kid I know is/was working on finding bugs in binaries. He came to me for some insight and I had to understand what he was doing and when I did, I kept saying "just hire people that don't do this stupid stuff" and he kept laughing at me and said it was impossible. I don't consider myself to be that good of a programmer, I can point to dozens of people my age that can run circles around me and I'm sure there are many more. But apparently the bar is pretty low these days and I agree, that's sad. -- --- Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat