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Dieter Simon (talk | contribs) A lot of this needs to be rewritten for an encyclopedia article |
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It's neither NPOV nor accurate, based on my four years programming with it on a dual CPU Honeywell 66/60 mainframe in the 1981-85 period, working with the Mollusc CLI. C is definitely better but not <i>that</i> much better. B had all of the core concepts required for systems programming in that environment, though it definitely lacked some C refinements I appreciate. I didn't have any significant character type issues using it with 9 bit bytes and 36 bit machine words. Was certainly way better than doing systems programming in FORTRAN...:) The greater impediment on that system was the line editor, which taught me regular expressions very well but was a real pain to use for editing. The line editor was the best editor available on the system. I've read a rather better history of the evolution of the language and I'll update the article a bit more after doing the necessary research to find it again.[[User:JamesDay|JamesDay]] 20:12, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)
:Just did that and added links to the sources. [[User:JamesDay|JamesDay]] 19:25, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
==A non-specialist’s complaint==
I would so like to comprehend this article. A general encyclopedia is meant to enlighten and explain but I am afraid this is well beyond me.
B programming language is not best-known to me. What did BCPL have that is now stripped away to become language B and that Ken Thompson felt he could do without? Is there a lesser-known language that might have equally been of use? What are GCOS that are being run by Honeywell 36 bit mainframes?
These are only a few questions that might be asked by someone uninitiated in the finer arts of computer-speak. You might start like: “B programming language was a transitional phase between BCPL and C. BCPL consisted of …. but was felt to be redundant by … Ken Thompson…. because …”, etc. Who was Ken Thompson, anyway?
The article as it stands is next to useless because there are so many things unexplained. [[User:Dieter Simon|Dieter Simon]] 01:16, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
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