Pelles C forum

Pelles C => General discussions => Topic started by: reynoldlariza on September 11, 2005, 02:09:33 PM

Title: knowing the author?
Post by: reynoldlariza on September 11, 2005, 02:09:33 PM
it's not that I want to know where Pelle's live or what he eats, I'm just wondering... why don't he have any profile or history about him and this C compiler. I know that it's not important to most of us, but whenever I HATE something or LIKE or better LOVE something may it be in real or virtual world, I always loved to know what, who's, where, and why about the author and his materpiece. It similar to a movie... If I find a movie really great I appreciate/praise the artist(actors/actress), but more on its producers, directors, and writers (yes, those behind the camera). If I didn't like it, I usually blame those behind the staff.

hehe :wink:  sorry it's just my nature.

oh! yes, I do like Pelle's C, and I also had read about the hidden story about C++. However, of the current software industry situation, competition is its twin. It cannot be removed unless it's not commercial or publicly available. I'm saying this because, I have touched and worked with many Rapid Application Development (simply known as RAD)software. I enjoyed a few, but still I stick to C/C++ as this is the first language I learned. One thing that's lurking on my mind, if C programmers don't like (or worst... HATE) C++... aren't most user programs written from these RAD tools? aren't many of these RAD tools written using C++? ok enough about it...

all I'm saying is that computer programming language were not meant to compete to each other based on how easy or complex each of them to use, rather its about the output, the product, the outcome. Why would I use a RAD tool if it's too BUGGY? and why would I use a complex, difficult language if I only need to program some basic tasks.

P.S. hehe my apologies for barging in to the forum with these words on my head. I just had a bit of frustrations working on a project im working on. it's C++ its microsoft and it's a plug-in tool for NeoBook. speaking of NeoBook, I've had some test on converting the C++ SDK to C but I had a minor bug problem with (it's within NeoBook, probably), though I manage to make it work. However, i have a question... why would I convert C++ to C if C++ can compile C? isn't that should make C++ better than C?

well, that's (almost) everything on my head.

btw, although honestly I had not made any programs using it, I still like Pelle's C. and I want to know what's behind it?, how did it came up? , who made it? , when it was started? , what's the purpose?

oh well, how many times did I said sorry? :oops: ... again sorry, but hey at least I shared something may it be good, not-good or worst.
Title: Re: knowing the author?
Post by: Pelle on September 11, 2005, 03:19:42 PM
Quote from: "reynoldlariza"
it's not that I want to know where Pelle's live or what he eats, I'm just wondering... why don't he have any profile or history about him and this C compiler.

You will find the really short form of the story under the about link (to the right of home, contact) at the main page:
http://www.smorgasbordet.com/pellesc/index.htm

The longer story is that it (sort of) started in the late 1980's. I worked at a consultant company that also sold several products written in BASIC (for a, since long, dead Swedish micro computer). When IBM PC started to catch on, it was decided it would be cheaper to port the BASIC programs to IBM PC, rather than write new programs. Several different soultions were tried, and used, but there were soo many problems and bugs with that, so I finally thought "I can't do worse myself". I wrote an interpreter in assembler (this was DOS with 640 kB, remember?) which my boss finally said OK to.

Over time this evolved into a compiler for DOS, a compiler for 16-bit Windows, and finally a complete build system for 32-bit Windows (not only a compiler, but also a linker, a make utility and so on).

After many years working on this, it was finally decided that more main-stream development tools should be used. I then thought it would be waste to just throw away a perfectly good linker, library manager and so on - why not add a compiler for the language they were all written in: C.

Writing a C compiler from scratch seemed like a huge task, so starting from the best I could find at that point (~1999), LCC, and improving it seemed better. This took several years anyway, but I finally had something working. After using it for a while, I thought "if I find this useful, maybe someone else will...?" so I created this web page, and here we are...

Some quick notes about programming languages: I think we have soo many different languages because people are so different. Some feel they are more productive in Forth, some like both C and C++ for different reasons/projects, and so on. I personally feel I'm more productive in C, than in C++, and I'm probably not alone. If I need a quick & dirty solution, I usually code in Visual Basic, but if I need something more persistent, I prefer C.

Pelle
Title: Re: knowing the author?
Post by: reynoldlariza on September 12, 2005, 12:41:33 PM
Quote from: "Pelle"
The longer story is that it (sort of) started in the late 1980's. I worked at a consultant company that also sold several products written in BASIC (for a, since long, dead Swedish micro computer). When IBM PC started to catch on, it was decided it would be cheaper to port the BASIC programs to IBM PC, rather than write new programs. Several different soultions were tried, and used, but there were soo many problems and bugs with that, so I finally thought "I can't do worse myself". I wrote an interpreter in assembler (this was DOS with 640 kB, remember?) which my boss finally said OK to.

Over time this evolved into a compiler for DOS, a compiler for 16-bit Windows, and finally a complete build system for 32-bit Windows (not only a compiler, but also a linker, a make utility and so on).

After many years working on this, it was finally decided that more main-stream development tools should be used. I then thought it would be waste to just throw away a perfectly good linker, library manager and so on - why not add a compiler for the language they were all written in: C.

Writing a C compiler from scratch seemed like a huge task, so starting from the best I could find at that point (~1999), LCC, and improving it seemed better. This took several years anyway, but I finally had something working. After using it for a while, I thought "if I find this useful, maybe someone else will...?" so I created this web page, and here we are...


well that should be fill it up :)  I like to request this to be put on the help file and the about page as well. :wink:

oh btw, I caught a bit of crash with Beta 4, it's when I select fold all then unfold all. What's weird is that it only seem to happen on a project I wrote previously with version 2.9+, but when I created a new project in Beta4, folding all-unfolding all just works fine...

maybe this happens if you open a project written using version 2.9(-/+)  to version 4Beta4. oh well, that's just an incomplete observation I'll try to do that on some other version 2.9 project files.

oh I can't resist to say :wink:  I love DOS and I still have this PC with 22MHz, 640KB (8-pin)RAM, 640KB VRAM, with 5.25 floppy drive all in this big fat tower casing, and this small, bulky monochrome monitor :lol:
that's about it, ok thank you very much Pelle. :lol: I learned assembly on it using DEBUG and stepped up to Turbo Cv2.01 then to Turbo C++ 1.01-3.0, boy! I still love those days.

that's about it, thanks Pelle :)
Title: Re: knowing the author?
Post by: Pelle on September 12, 2005, 05:34:29 PM
Quote from: "reynoldlariza"
well that should be fill it up :)  I like to request this to be put on the help file and the about page as well. :wink:

OK, I will try to do that later (I always thought the code would be more interesting than the story behind it - but you never know... ;-) )

Quote from: "reynoldlariza"

oh btw, I caught a bit of crash with Beta 4, it's when I select fold all then unfold all. What's weird is that it only seem to happen on a project I wrote previously with version 2.9+, but when I created a new project in Beta4, folding all-unfolding all just works fine...

I have changed the way I remember folding points in v4.0 - on the other hand, I try to handle this when converting projects to v4.0. I guess I have missed a case somewhere. I will dig up 2.90 and do some testing...

Thanks...

Pelle
Title: knowing the author?
Post by: Pelle on September 12, 2005, 10:39:52 PM
I have tried loading several v2.90 projects into v4.00, on both Windows XP and 98, and then played around with the foldings. I can't reproduce a crash...

I'm sure it can happen, one way or the other, but I'm not sure how.

Pelle
Title: knowing the author?
Post by: reynoldlariza on October 03, 2005, 09:22:22 AM
Quote from: "Pelle"
I have tried loading several v2.90 projects into v4.00, on both Windows XP and 98, and then played around with the foldings. I can't reproduce a crash...

I'm sure it can happen, one way or the other, but I'm not sure how.

Pelle


oh sorry for a long delayed response :oops:  anyway I re-did the scenario again, but this time the crash didn't occured.        
...odd :?  maybe it's just in my computer ive done all test in WinXP Pro SP2.
Anyway, thanks for the time checking it :)
Title: Re: vb :D
Post by: Raedwulf on October 03, 2005, 09:41:34 AM
Quote from: "Pelle"
If I need a quick & dirty solution, I usually code in Visual Basic, but if I need something more persistent, I prefer C.
Pelle


Wow you use vb :)

I guess you are refering to vb6 - so you will find this interesting.
http://thundervb.profitux.cz/

I'm doing quite a bit of asm coding for vb function placement in the ThunderVB project. It needs masm for inlineasm and it needs msvc 2003 for inline c.
Title: Re: vb :D
Post by: Pelle on October 03, 2005, 07:00:03 PM
Quote from: "Raedwulf"
Wow you use vb :)

Yes, it happens. Sometimes it's faster using a "scripting language".

Quote from: "Raedwulf"

I guess you are refering to vb6 - so you will find this interesting.

Yes, VB6. Thanks for the link!

Pelle
Title: Re: vb :D
Post by: Raedwulf on October 05, 2005, 09:01:13 AM
Quote from: "Pelle"

Yes, it happens. Sometimes it's faster using a "scripting language".


Yes it is - espeically if one doesn't know any scripting language - but generally it is faster because it has the logic of a programming language but is really simple.
In addition to that as it uses the vc++ 6 c2 compiler, it runs a lot faster than a scripted program :)  - vb is not at all bad.....its just that m$ must have done their damndest to try and make it bad....but as they don't always succeed in their objectives :) - we got something halfway.................:P
Title: Re: vb :D
Post by: Gerome on October 05, 2005, 10:24:25 AM
Hi,

Quote from: "Raedwulf"
Quote from: "Pelle"

Yes, it happens. Sometimes it's faster using a "scripting language".


Yes, scripting language is nice to make quick & dirty things :)
You can try FBSL there (http://www.fbsl.net/phpbb2/index.php) for your tests, a sorta VB like ;)
Title: knowing the author?
Post by: kobold on November 01, 2005, 08:23:26 PM
I use vbs for the quick and dirty programming things  #-o
Title: knowing the author?
Post by: benjaminmaggi on November 21, 2005, 06:54:47 AM
not all scripting lenguages are *toys* i mostly use REBOL and i found it to be just great not just to do dirty and fast programing and by fast i mean you type code as fast as you can think !
But some times the i get that nasty noise inside my head in i just have to code in C