Re: Interesting article on the adoption of Software Security

[Crispin Cowan <crispin () immunix com>]

Andreas Saurwein wrote:


Crispin Cowan wrote:
However, where ever C made an arbitrary decision (either way is just 
as good) PL/M went the opposite direction from C, making it very 
annoying for a C programmer to use.


Does that mean it did not make any decision at all? What was the outcome?


No, just trivial decisions on syntax. It made my fingers hurt to use it, 
because I had to retrain a lot of habits. Unfortunately I no longer 
remember the specifics.



When you've been around for a while, you start to see the same features
converge..  UNIX had quotas, we got Quotas with Win XP Server (well 
earlier,
when you include the third party ISVs - as an add on).  IBM had 
Language

Environment (LE) before .NET come along.


Crispin Cowan wrote:
I think .Net borrows most heavily from Java. Java in turn borrows 
from everyone. The "managed code" thing in particular leads back to 
the Pascal P-code interpreter; a kludge to make the Pascal compiler 
easier to implement and port. The innovation in Java was to take this 
ugly kludge and market it as a feature :)


Michael S Hines wrote:

I'm not sure that it can be blamed on Pascal. Microsoft was shipping 
Excel for the Mac in the early 80's as P-Code application and has been 
selling P-Code generating compilers since about the same time. Ever 
since, MS was strong on P-Code generating compilers.


The UCSD Pascal P-Code system was released in 1978 
<http://www.informationheadquarters.com/History_of_computing/UCSD_p-System.shtml>. 
MS Excel was released in 1984 
<http://www.dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html>. And if anything, 
the above claim that MS has been using P-code since the early days of 
Excel only supports the claim that Pascal P-Code is the origin of the 
idea at Microsoft.


Crispin

--
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.  http://immunix.com/~crispin/
CTO, Immunix          http://immunix.com