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From: phipps@garth.UUCP (Clay Phipps)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Late Bloomers Revisited
Summary: Contains references to 2 sources of info on PL/I as a tool for Multics.
Message-ID: <3501@garth.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jan 90 18:21:50 GMT
References: <1517@aber-cs.UUCP> <5455@bd.sei.cmu.edu> <18510@netnews.upenn.edu>
Reply-To: phipps@garth.UUCP (Clay Phipps)
Organization: Intergraph APD, in semiarid Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 41

In article <18510@netnews.upenn.edu>,
farber@linc.cis.upenn.edu (David Farber) writes:
>
>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.

Their estimate was reported by Corbat'o as 6 months.
Corbat'o described himself as a "member of the design team" for Multics.

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

Corbat'o reported that "in spite of the dedication of the people involved",
reaching the "barely usable" stage actually required 15 months, 
and "a lot of work went into upgrading it in the next 18 months". 
"But it works and is useful", he concluded.

For more detail than net-bandwidth concerns are likely to allow this thread
of discussion to provide on the design and implementation of Multics, 
readers might be interested in hunting down the 1965 FJCC proceedings.
Another source, from which the quotes here were drawn, is the paper

F.J. Corbat'o: "PL/I As A Tool For System Programming: Five Years With 
A Temporary Compiler", _Datamation_ (hide it inside an issue of _CACM_ 
if you are too embarrassed to risk discovery that you ever read 
_Datamation_ :-), May 1969.

Disclaimer: I wasn't there, so I don't know how representative 
Corbat'o's paper was of the opinions of members of the Multics project team.
Mention of estimated and actual compiler completion times is not intended to 
denigrate the efforts of the people involved.  Deity knows *I'm* not perfect.
-- 
[The foregoing may or may not represent the position, if any, of my employer, ]
[ who is identified solely to allow the reader to account for personal biases.]
                                              
Clay Phipps 
Intergraph APD: 2400#4 Geng Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303; 415/852-2327
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