Python design philosophy

[Thomas Wouters]

On 30 Jun 2000 19:47:38 +1200, Paul Foley <see at below> wrote:
>On Fri, 30 Jun 2000 02:03:56 GMT, Grant Edwards wrote:

>> C predates the PDP-11 so we'll chalk it up to convergent
>> evolution.

>Oh no it doesn't.

Oh yes it does ;) The first bits of C, including, for instance, the
auto-increment operators, were designed and used on the PDP-7, not the
PDP-11.

> C was written for the Unix port to PDP-11.

More like 'during' than 'for'. UNIX and C both, together, evolved on for
quite a number of years (witness the new C & UNIX 'standards')

>(Perhaps you're thinking of Unix!?)

Well, UNIX has it's roots on the same PDP-7 that saw birth of the 'new B'
language, which eventually turned into 'C'. 'new B' was (not suprisingly)
based on the language 'B', and both were interpreted rather than compiled
(because the PDP-7 had too little resources to support a compiler.)

Of course, like the early bicycles, very few of us would actually recognize
the OS, the language or the hardware if they didn't have museumtags attached
;-)

(I saw an old PDP-11 used as a telco-switch in a museum a few months back;)