From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: An Open ANSI Forth Implementation
Date: 30 Jul 92 12:33:50 GMT
Organization: EIEI-U

Category 10,  Topic 41
Message 20        Thu Jul 30, 1992
D.RUFFER [Dennis]            at 01:12 EDT
 
Re: anton@mips.complang.tuwie

 > Even if AT&T "pushed heavily" (which I doubt), it would not have
 > done them any good. No vendor can force the universities to accept
 > something they think is wrong. Otherwise the language of academia
 > would be PL/1.

The "push" was Unix which supported what universities needed.  As I said (:I
think:), C was just an after thought.  If universities wanted programs that
ran on their new Unix boxes, they _had_ to teach people the language.  The was
_no_ assembly language at the time (if I remember right) and even to this day,
assembly is certainly not very portable between the various Unix boxes.

PL/1 never was in the same boat, and neither is Forth for that matter.  No
machine that I know of is reliant on PL/1 (or Forth) programming to get work
done.  In PL/1's case, as with almost every other language, there are all
sorts of other alternatives.  There is the case of Basic Assembly Language on
Burroughs' machines, but since the machines sucked :(I had to use them once):
the language didn'at have much of a chance anyways.

 > Also, note that the commercial development of UNIX (and
 > environment, e.g. the C compiler) was done by a different group
 > of AT&T once the system was popular, i.e. the language made
 > popular by a free research prototype was taken up by a commercial
 > vendor. Does it make any difference that they were in the same
 > company? IMO no.

Our opinions differ.  The IBM PC started the same way.  Once the original got
popular, the original arm of the company could not handle the success.  BTW,
it should be noted that Unix and C were _only_ available at no cost to
universities.  Anyone else who wanted to use it had to pay AT&T big bucks for
a license.  I think they were _very_ smart in how they handled it.  They blew
it once it became popular (IMHO), but they certainly knew how to light the
fire.

 > To return to the original point, how much profit did AT&T make
 > from C?

AT&T did pretty good, until the whole thing got too big for any one company to
handle.  I'm certain that they at least paid for their research efforts.  I
may be wrong, and AT&T can mess up just about any good thing, but in the early
days, they were certainly charging non-acedemia users enough to convince other
vendors that it was worth offering alternatives.  I have no idea how many they
sold, but I'm sure the number is substantial.

 > Has this profit suffered from GNU C?

From what I've heard so far, YES!  All the C vendors appear to be scrambling
to keep up with GNU and I'm sure they are seeing its popularity in their
pocket books.

 > Has C's popularity suffered from GNU C? Hardly.

There I agree with you.  Users _love_ freebees!  I've heard GNU C is quite
impressive and I'd hate to be a C vendor right now.  Yet, as a Forth vendor
(or someone who works for one at least), I encourage the PD Forth efforts.  I
feel the Forth vendors need this drive to bring Forth into the 90's and
beyond.  Without them, we'd still be stuck in the TTY interface that Chuck
first designed.  On the other hand, I chuckle when someone suggests _any_
Forth is going to be _the_ Forth of the future.

BTW, FORTRAN fits the same mold as COBOL and to some respects RPG. Each has a
_huge_ following because IBM gives it away with their machines.  I think BASIC
also fits this pattern since it comes with every IBM PC and with every MSDOS
that is sold.  In many ways, this is exactly how C started also, except in
that case it wasn't the machine, but the OS that drove its popularity.  Maybe
if the Forth chips had become really popular, or if there was some really
popular application that only used Forth as its "macro" language, we might
have a chance at popularity.  However, lacking that, how many read the EE
article a while ago about Forth?  I just heard that FIG has gotten over 500
new member sign ups because we are now the "elite" language.  Obviously, the
reports of our death was a little premature.

   {B-{)>   DaR
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