[Coco] Re: cc6809 project

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Wed, 2005-03-23 at 21:05 -0500, Albert Stinger wrote:

> It don't matter to me. I like using the K&R style just fine. It's where
> it all started anyway. I remember when they said that K&R c language
> would practically get rid of interfacing to other systems type problems.
> All you needed was to use the stdlib and write your own input and
> output type routines where the manual specified. What ever happened
> to that statement. Now there is as much if not more interfacing
> problems between systems and even programs on the same system.
> 

I don't know... if you look at a system like Debian GNU/Linux which runs
on most popular architectures, the goal of cross platform compatibility
seems to me to have been achieved. C is the lingua franca of the open
source world.

But beyond the shell prompt the problems go beyond what language you
choose. The portability issues there are related to what libraries are
available for any given platform. Again the free/open source world has
the best cross-platform compatibility story to tell.

Now back porting open source stuff to the Coco... well, first the issue
is there is no ANSI C compiler (that's being worked on). The second
issue is that you're taking programs compiled for a 32-bit machine to c
an 8/16 bit machine, without much beyond the standard library supporting
you. So there are issues beyond language there too...

-- John.