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From: farber@linc.cis.upenn.edu (David Farber)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Late Bloomers Revisited
Message-ID: <18510@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 27 Dec 89 16:22:28 GMT
References: <1517@aber-cs.UUCP> <5455@bd.sei.cmu.edu>
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: farber@linc.cis.upenn.edu (David Farber)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
Lines: 22


As someone who was there and was part of the descision making process
at the beginning of Multics, let me add some info.

At the beginning of multics there was the normal problem
of what to program it in . We walked through assembler, B, 
even comtran and fortran. For obvious reasons
they were not attractive. I had be in on the begging of NPL
(latter PL/1 ) and Doug McIlroy had been on the 3x3
that fortulated NPL initial specs. NPL seemed
to be the route to go but there was no compiler for it. 
Bob Morris and Doug McIlroy thought they could put one togather
rapidly so we went with it.

In hinesight it was the right path; PL/1 was not a easy
language to compile for but there was NO other route.

Dave
David Farber; Prof. of CIS and EE, U of Penn, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6389 Tele:
215-898-9508(off); 215-274-8292 (home); FAX: 215-898-0587;  Cellular:  302-740-
1198 "The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the
sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment." -- R. P. Feynman