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From: steven@boring.uucp (Steven Pemberton)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: BCPL and stray bogons
Message-ID: <6748@boring.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-Jan-86 08:54:04 EST
Article-I.D.: boring.6748
Posted: Thu Jan 30 08:54:04 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Feb-86 07:20:03 EST
References: <1098@caip.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: steven@mcvax.UUCP (Steven Pemberton)
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 24
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax

In article <1098@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> daemon@caip.UUCP writes:
> >BCPL stands for the "Before 'C' Programming Language", and was developed
> >for the PDP-11 many years ago by the folks who brought us UNIX (Ken Thompson,
> >et al).  I believe you can read more in The 'C' Programming Language.
> 
> Wow!!  A 10 on the Bogometer (also known as the B.S.  detector)!!  BCPL
> has nothing to do with 'C' other than the fact that: 'B' was "sort of"
> derived from BCPL and 'C' *was* derived from 'B'.  BCPL was in use long
> before 'C' was a gleam in Thompson's eye.
> 
> BCPL was first described (we believe) by Martin Richards in AFIPS SJCC
> #34, 1969, pp.  557-566.  BCPL was also one of the first structured
> programming languages, predating ALGOL.

Well, at least a 5 on the Bogometer for that. Algol dates from at least
May 1958, when it was still called IAL (International Algorithmic Language)
though the first meetings on the language date from about a year earlier.

"Algol is sometimes considered to have fathered a number of variants such as
[...], CPL, [...]"
R.W. Bemer, A Polico-social History of Algol, in Halpern and Shaw, Annual
Review in Automatic Programming, Vol 5, Pergamon Press, 1969.

Steven Pemberton, CWI, Amsterdam; steven@mcvax.uucp.