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Date: 16 Dec 92 21:45:17 GMT
From: agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!pa
cific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!convex!spray@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Rob Spray)
Subject: Re: Open Systems closed to Ada?
Message-ID: <spray.724542317@convex.convex.com>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In <EMERY.92Dec16101016@dr_no.mitre.org> emery@dr_no.mitre.org (David Emery) wr
ites:

>>Ada is certainly not a bad language; it wasn't nearly as well supported
>>as C for its first 5 or more years, but that is finally getting better.

>Huh?  How many C compilers were there during the first 5 years of C,
>back around 1972 or so...

Well, I don't think C was five years old until 1977-78.  The B compiler
was written by Ken Thompson in 1970 (1).  Unix was re-written in C in 1973.
(2).

However, in 1978, apart from the PDP-11, "C compilers run on a wide
variety of machines, including the Honeywell 6000, the IBM System/360,
and the Interdata 8/32."(3)

Sounds like about where Ada was ten years later, no?  In terms of 
compiler availability, that is.

I surmise that the original poster meant that during the first five
of Ada compiler availability, C was a better supported language in
terms of compiler availability and tool support. Hardly a revelation,
since it's a smaller language and roughly a decade older.

--Rob  spray@convex.com

(1) Bell System Technical Journal July-August 1978 Vol 57, No 6, Part 2
    p1992
(2) ibid, p1907
(3) ibid, p1991