On 2013-12-17, Mark Lawrence <breamore...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On 17/12/2013 16:59, Grant Edwards wrote:
>>
>> I've always thought C was a great language for low-level, bare-metal,
>> embedded stuff -- but teaching it to first or second year computer
>> science students is just insane. C has a certain minimalist
>> orthogonality that I have always found pleasing. [People who smile
>> wistfully when they think about the PDP-11 instruction word layouts
>> probably know what I mean.]
>
> I agree with you here, but wasn't there a tie-in between C and the rise
> of Unix via universities, or am I barking in the wrong forest?
Yes, I think the popularity of Unix on university campuses is what
caused the migration from Pascal to C for freshman programming
classes. IIRC, there were decent Pascal compilers for Unix back then,
so I still think it was a big mistake. Later on when studying low
level OS stuff would have been a fine time to introduce C if required
for logistical reasons.
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