[TUHS] Re: What would early alternatives to C have been?

["Charles H. Sauer" <sauer@technologists.com>]

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[While walking 5 miles through the snow …]

> On Mar 9, 2025, at 9:03 PM, Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
> > everyone should write for their first compiler in Pascal for a
> > simple language and no cheating using YACC.  You need to write the whole
> > thing if you want to understand how parsing really works.
> 
> Yacc certainly makes it easier to write parsers for big grammars, but it's far from cheating. You need to know a lot more about parsing to use Yacc than you need to roll your own. 
> 
> Hand parsing of a tiny grammar is almost a  necessary step on the way to understanding Yacc. But I think hand-building the whole parser for a compiler is unnecessary torture--like doing trigonometry with log tables.
> 
> Doug

In 1971 compiler construction course at UT-Austin, we had to use CDC Fortran to build a compiler for a subset of Algol 60. Undergraduates used punch cards and RJE to the 6600/6400 shared by all but the privleged few.

Charlie

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