From owner-freebsd-newbies Sun Feb 14 18:20:45 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA15151 for freebsd-newbies-outgoing; Sun, 14 Feb 1999 18:20:45 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from isis.dynip.com ([139.141.220.12]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA15137 for ; Sun, 14 Feb 1999 18:20:18 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from root@isis.dynip.com) From: root@isis.dynip.com Received: (from root@localhost) by isis.dynip.com (8.9.2/8.9.1) id FAA04186; Mon, 15 Feb 1999 05:18:44 +0300 (AST) (envelope-from root) Message-Id: <199902150218.FAA04186@isis.dynip.com> Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 05:18:44 +0300 (AST) Reply-To: root@isis.dynip.com Subject: Re: Very Strange Question To: durang@u.washington.edu cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On 14 Feb, K. Marsh wrote: > O.K. Well let me begin by saying "I don't know". I think you under estimate your knowledge, lloking at your answer. > I do know that the first home PC had no keyboard or monitor, but had a > bunch of switches and lights on it. Very interesting, which year was that. >You had to use the switches to put in > your program byte-by-byte, and if you screwed up, you had to start all > over. These bytes I can only assume were in machine language - binaries. The computer "BITES" you ask to speak. > So what probably happened was, some guy wrote a compiler in machine > language to compile the code of some slightly more sophisticated and > intelligable language Ya, but who, when, which machine architecture, what was his motivations and targets, and above all which was the FIRST HIGH LEVEL language, I mean right above machine language was first developed, is it ... MachineLanguage (binary bits 0 & 1) --> Assembly --> MacroAssembly --> Fortran --> COBOL --> ADDA --> BASIC --> C --> C++ --> JAVA What was the order, and the inventors, what made them invent that. can anyone see what I am aiming at ? I am looking in the History of computers, for the sake of the future of computers. > and then someone used that language to write a > compiler for yet another higher-level language, and so on, until one day > Dennis wrote a C compiler and C was born. I don't know what language the > first C compiler was written in. I sure hope it wasn't machine language, > though. So, what was the first application made in C. > > I guess the real meat in my answer is that the first compiler didn't need > to be compiled, because it was written in a binary form that the computer > could use without compilation or interpretation. You are probably very close to the correct answer, but when was the concept of compiling into binary format developed, and why the hell there are so many binary formats, does this indicate that none of them is effecient enough, and a new UNIVERSAL binary format is needed, the kind of binary that runs on any architecutre, or any OS. Finally I can't thank enough all the people who will share in clearing this topic. Bye for now. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message