Re: The History of the ALGOL Effort

henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
11 Sep 2006 15:55:23 -0400

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[3 earlier articles]
Re: The History of the ALGOL Effort Juergen.Kahrs@vr-web.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=FCrgen_Kahrs?=) (2006-08-18)
Re: The History of the ALGOL Effort H.T.de.Beer@gmail.com (HT de Beer) (2006-08-18)
Re: The History of the ALGOL Effort henry@spsystems.net (2006-08-18)
Re: The History of the ALGOL Effort p_ludemann@yahoo.com (Peter Ludemann) (2006-08-29)
Re: The History of the ALGOL Effort ArarghMail608@Arargh.com (2006-08-30)
Re: The History of the ALGOL Effort alexc@TheWorld.com (Alex Colvin) (2006-08-31)
Re: The History of the ALGOL Effort henry@spsystems.net (2006-09-11)
Re: Pascal vs. linkers, was The History of the ALGOL Effort walter@bytecraft.com (Walter Banks) (2006-09-11)
Re: Pascal vs. linkers, was The History of the ALGOL Effort Juergen.Kahrs@vr-web.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=FCrgen_Kahrs?=) (2006-09-11)
Re: The History of the ALGOL Effort Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com (Peter Flass) (2006-09-11)
Re: Pascal vs. linkers, was The History of the ALGOL Effort Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com (Peter Flass) (2006-09-11)
Re: The History of the ALGOL Effort cbarron413@adelphia.net (Carl Barron) (2006-09-12)
Re: Pascal vs. linkers, was The History of the ALGOL Effort gah@ugcs.caltech.edu (glen herrmannsfeldt) (2006-09-12)
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From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 11 Sep 2006 15:55:23 -0400
Organization: SP Systems, Toronto, Canada
References: 06-08-082 06-08-086 06-08-105 06-08-138
Keywords: algol60, Pascal, history, comment
Posted-Date: 11 Sep 2006 15:55:23 EDT

Peter Ludemann <p_ludemann@yahoo.com> wrote:
>One of the nice properties of the PL360 compiler is that it could
>compile a program, produce a listing, and cross-references faster than
>IBM's IEBPTPCH utility could produce only a listing.


This experience had wider ramifications, too: PL360 compiled so much
faster than IBM's glacially-slow linker could link, that it soured Wirth
on separate compilation. The result was several influential languages,
most notably Pascal, with no provision for separate compilation.


(Some of the early papers describing Pascal say fairly explicitly that
this feature has been omitted partly because a well-written compiler
is so much faster than linkers that you don't need separate
compilation.)


And that, in turn, contributed to the rise of C, because the fact was that
people needed and wanted separate compilation.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | henry@spsystems.net
[Back in the 1970s at Dartmouth, the DTSS compilers were also so fast that
they didn't have a linker and for most purposes, didn't even bother to
save object code. They finally wrote a linker in about 1976 when they
added PL/I. -John]

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