as@castle.ed.ac.uk (A Stevens) (01/13/91)
I know I shouldn't but I couldn't resist a reply. Apologies in advance. > Before you start insulting BCPL, just remember that without BCPL > we would never have had the C language. Also remember that many No insult to BCPL just a gentle jibe at a somewhat parochial choice of first compiled (not BBC BASIC) HLL for the BBC micro. BCPL does after all pretty much posit a word-addressed machine, and is used not a lot more outside of Cambridge than say IMP is outside Edinburgh. For my money, given the time-frame (Not much call for C in those days) and Educational sales of the Beeb a Pascal would have been a fine choice. It would have run a little faster too. >of Acorn's programmers went to Cambridge University, and BCPL was >by far the best general purpose language on the mainframe (IBM 370). And I thought higher education broadened people's horizon's :-) Seriously, I am old enough to know a little about Richards et al's work in and around BCPL. The language undoubtedly played a respectable role in 70's Comp. Sci., but was a pretty funny choice for a mass market machine. I guess ease of porting of the CINTCODE environment must have played a significant role also... Andrew