On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 at 2:25:17 PM UTC+2, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
> The first language I really liked was Pascal.
> But the Pascal family of languages (including Ada) have
> clearly failed to become popular, at least compared
> to the C-family (C, C++, C#, ....)
>
> The question is why did this happen?
>
> My theory: C was used to develop Unix/Linux and
> Windows, and this made it easier for applications
> to be written in C/C++ since the interface to the OS
> was easier. VMS did not choose C (considered a huge
> blunder by many. They choose Bliss
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS instead! and we
> all know what happens to VMS.
>
> What is your theory on this? Was there another
> reason or set of reasons?
>
> Can we all blame this success of the C family of
> languages on Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan
> brilliance and it being used for Unix?
>
> --Nasser

By chance.

Most of the time a concept/idea is simply too ahead-of-time, or misunderstood.

In the 80s, there was P-code on the Apple II. It was beautiful and fast. But it was too early.

25 years later, Java bytecode came out, exactly the same thing, a cheeky clone.

It was a success (at least, commercially).

"Gabriele Galeotti" <gabriele.galeotti.xyz@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:62a51520-f7bc-4bbf-b0bf-fdfb1c1a9dadn@googlegroups.com...
....
> In the 80s, there was P-code on the Apple II. It was beautiful and fast.
> But it was too early.

P-code existed on a lot of machines; there was even a hardware CPU version
of it. At least one of the early Ada compilers was built for as well.

> 25 years later, Java bytecode came out, exactly the same thing, a cheeky
> clone.
>
> It was a success (at least, commercially).

Given all of the above, p-code was a relative success as well. It just died
out for whatever reason before Java came around doing approximately the same
thing. (Quite possibly the possibility of practical just-in-time compilation
made Java stick around longer than p-code.)

But the reality of it is that the hype machine got behind Java for whatever
reason, but never really did behind Ada or pc-code.

(Note that the intermediate code used by Janus/Ada was based on the ideas of
p-code [with Ada-specific stuff like exception handling and tasking]; code
at the level has a number of advantages. We never built an interpreter for
it although it would be possible.)

Randy.

Gabriele Galeotti <gabriele.galeotti.xyz@gmail.com> writes:
> In the 80s, there was P-code on the Apple II... 25 years later, Java
> bytecode came out, exactly the same thing, a cheeky clone.

The JVM isn't really comparable to P-code. It is a lot fancier,
including features for multithreading and for garbage collection.

On Thursday, June 3, 2021 at 1:40:54 AM UTC+2, Paul Rubin wrote:
> Gabriele Galeotti <gabriele.g...@gmail.com> writes:
> > In the 80s, there was P-code on the Apple II... 25 years later, Java
> > bytecode came out, exactly the same thing, a cheeky clone.
> The JVM isn't really comparable to P-code. It is a lot fancier,
> including features for multithreading and for garbage collection.

Well, obviously they put into the thing those mandatory features, plus
25 years of technological advantages (the P-code had to run on a 64kB,
1-MHz 6502), but the base concept is nearly the same, a stack-based VM.

On Thursday, June 3, 2021 at 1:11:13 AM UTC+2, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> "Gabriele Galeotti" <gabriele.g...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:62a51520-f7bc-4bbf...@googlegroups.com...
> ...
> > In the 80s, there was P-code on the Apple II. It was beautiful and fast.
> > But it was too early.
> P-code existed on a lot of machines; there was even a hardware CPU version
> of it. At least one of the early Ada compilers was built for as well.
> > 25 years later, Java bytecode came out, exactly the same thing, a cheeky
> > clone.
> >
> > It was a success (at least, commercially).
> Given all of the above, p-code was a relative success as well. It just died
> out for whatever reason before Java came around doing approximately the same
> thing. (Quite possibly the possibility of practical just-in-time compilation
> made Java stick around longer than p-code.)
>
> But the reality of it is that the hype machine got behind Java for whatever
> reason, but never really did behind Ada or pc-code.
>
> (Note that the intermediate code used by Janus/Ada was based on the ideas of
> p-code [with Ada-specific stuff like exception handling and tasking]; code
> at the level has a number of advantages. We never built an interpreter for
> it although it would be possible.)
>
> Randy.

I understand. No doubt that also the pcode was successful, but it is a pity
that it couldn't make the point in the 90s, at least on microcomputer-class
machines.

Still talking about the Apple II, I think one of the reason is that it was way
too complicated for the average user, with no less than 5 thick manuals
and an underlying OS like the UCSD that was a radical departure in
those times.

On Wed, 2 Jun 2021 18:29:09 -0700 (PDT), Gabriele Galeotti
<gabriele.galeotti.xyz@gmail.com> declaimed the following:

>I understand. No doubt that also the pcode was successful, but it is a pity
>that it couldn't make the point in the 90s, at least on microcomputer-class
>machines.
>
Faster processors, and the "standardization" on IBM's architecture, may
have contributed... Since there was only "one" machine the portability of
P-code (same object files, just provide a new interpreter layer for
different architecture) wasn't a factor anymore.

>Still talking about the Apple II, I think one of the reason is that it was way
>too complicated for the average user, with no less than 5 thick manuals
>and an underlying OS like the UCSD that was a radical departure in
>those times.

While the UCSD compiler was reasonable, the UCSD OS that went with it
was a bit of a pain. All files had to be contiguous (no jumping to next
free sector), so one ended up periodically compressing the disk so files
were at the front and all free-space consolidated. That also meant only one
open output file per floppy drive, as output files opened in the largest
contiguous free-space.

--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
wlfraed@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/