Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999 21:18:45 -0800 (PST) From: "K. Marsh" <durang@u.washington.edu> To: root@isis.dynip.com Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Very Strange Question Message-ID: <Pine.A41.4.05.9902142102390.40018-100000@goodall1.u.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <199902150218.FAA04186@isis.dynip.com>
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On Mon, 15 Feb 1999 root@isis.dynip.com wrote: > > 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. Don't know. Probably in the seventies. I was too young to care. I saw this machine on a PBS special about computing. You can probably rent the video in a good video store. > is it, > MachineLanguage (binary bits 0 & 1) --> Assembly --> MacroAssembly --> > Fortran --> COBOL --> ADDA --> BASIC --> C --> C++ --> JAVA I don't know. Maybe a PBS special will come out on programming languages, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Try your local library. > So, what was the first application made in C. I'll bet it was "hello world", but I don't know this either. > 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. Binaries formats are sort of a necessity given the assortment of platforms on which they run. Imagine if every device in the world was restricted to D-cell batteries. Your car would have about a hundred of them, and your watch would hurt your wrist. Even if you restrict discussion to desktop computers, every computer processor must have a specific binary format that will do the job in the most efficient way. To force them all to use one standard format is not good if their performance is compromised as a result. For the sake of standardizing, C is very portable and if source code is distributed instead of binary files, I think it's a good solution. Then anyone can make any hardware they want, and any OS that uses any binary. As long as they have a C compiler, they're fine. In the future when processors are so fast that it just doesn't matter anymore then maybe something more like JAVA will become the language of choice. Kenneth J. Marsh University of Washington durang@u.washington.edu Chemical Engineering To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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