> From owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org Sun Nov 14 03:09:59 2010 > Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 01:00:35 -0800 > From: per...@pluto.rain.com > To: per...@apotheon.com > Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > Subject: History of C (Re: Why do you use a devil as a mascot?) > > Chad Perrin <per...@apotheon.com> wrote: > > On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 02:32:04PM -0600, Robert Bonomi wrote: > > > should the one-leter name for 'c++' be 'd' or 'p'? > > > (nobody could decide/agree, which *IS* why it is 'c++' > > > to this day) > > > > ... D is already another programming language ... > > It wasn't back then :) > > > I don't know what this P has to do with it. > > You have revealed yourself as a newbie :) > > In the beginning there was CPL, the "Combined Programming Language." > It was large enough to be infeasible to implement using then-current > technologies, so the "Bootstrap Combined Programming Language" (BCPL) > was invented, with the intent that the first CPL compiler would be > written in BCPL. > > CPL never amounted to much -- I don't know whether it was ever > implemented at all -- but BCPL developed a following.
Trivia: BCPL was the _first_ programming language to use 'curly braces' to group statements. It also used '//' to indroduce a 'single-line comment'. > Someone > (at Bell Labs?) Ken Thompson, 1969 > produced a derivative called B, from which a few > researchers at Murray Hill derived C. Mostly one. Dennis Ritchie, circa 1972. Brian Kernighan contributed, and Ken stuck his oar in occasionally. > Thus the question: should > the next language in the series be named D (next alphabetically) > or P (next letter of BCPL)? _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
