On 09/22/2015 03:49 PM, Diane Bruce wrote:
On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 04:35:24PM -0400, Paul Koning wrote:

And Unix was no different, 'C' started out as a Fortran compiler.
Really?  "citation needed".
http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/expotape.htm


OK, Paul needed to read more closely. (Think I got the attribution right...)
This is Dennis Ritchie speaking about Ken Thompson:

   Anyway, it took him about a day to realize that he
   didn't want to do a Fortran compiler at all. So he did
   this very simple language called B and got it going on
   the PDP-7.


So, B was never actually a FORTRAN compiler, just Ken started thinking about FORTRAN grammar and within one DAY took off in a different direction. By that time (1969 or so) FORTRAN was a really old language, and considered way out of date by most universities' Comp Sci departments.

Jon

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