From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,b5d24fafdd53e815 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: "Ludovic Brenta" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Why C for the Open Source Movement? Date: 8 May 2006 02:05:26 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1147079126.797737.94340@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> References: <1146943727.180033.286070@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.190.145.10 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1147079131 8948 127.0.0.1 (8 May 2006 09:05:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 8 May 2006 09:05:31 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: User-Agent: G2/0.2 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; fr-FR; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040116,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) X-HTTP-Via: 1.1 SEVPXS01 Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=212.190.145.10; posting-account=ZjNXewwAAADyBPkwI57_UcX8yKfXWOss Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:4138 Date: 2006-05-08T02:05:26-07:00 List-Id: Jeffrey Creem writes : > All of those projects started before there was a freely available Ada > compiler. > > In the case of someting like the GNU project itself, when Stallman > started the GNU project, Ada 83 was not even really out yet and > certainly not in a position where it was stable. [...] I think C was well suited as a bootstrap language, because C was designed to make the compiler writer's job easy. When starting the GNU project, RMS first wrote a C compiler, and then used that to write a Lisp system, which he used for Emacs. That was the right thing to do, IMHO. Early on, Lisp was therefore in a much better position than Ada to become the language of choice for GNU. Even today, there is still quite a lot of Lisp in GNU/Linux systems; and not just in Emacs and XEmacs, as there are several free Common Lisp and Scheme systems available now. But even then, Lisp is still a minority language. So the OP's question remains valid, but in the context of the early days of the GNU project, I would ask "why C and not Lisp"? I think it may be because Lisp has or can be perceived to have too much overhead for writing libraries or a kernel, and so was summarily and incorrectly dismissed by application programmers. I would think the folks on comp.lang.lisp have already discussed this question many times. -- Ludovic Brenta.