Harvard vs. vonNeuman

From: Paul Koning <pkoning_at_equallogic.com>
Date: Tue Sep 28 17:13:02 2004

>>>>> "David" == David V Corbin <dvcorbin_at_optonline.net> writes:

 David> As many of you have pointed out there have been tools for
 David> generating programs from within programs for a long
 David> time. There have also been many programming environments which
 David> did not need a complete compiler.

 David> To the best of my knowledge, the Microsoft .NET platform is
 David> the first run-time environment [not development environment]
 David> in which a compiler, linker and all of the associated
 David> capabilities are included. If you have a windows machine [XP,
 David> 2K] and have applied the windowsupdates, then all of these
 David> tools are already resident on your machines!

You mean -- as opposed to having to install a developer's package for
it?

If that's what you mean, then the answer is no, not by many decades.
Unix boxes pretty much uniformly come with all that. BASIC systems
always had it, as did LISP boxes, or FORTH systems. All that goes
back to the 1970s if not before. And of course, any large machine
(timesharing or batch) has always had all this stuff as a matter of
course. The closest you might come is that some of these systems
would offer some languages standard, and some as extra cost options.

Developer's kits are largely a PC invention, I would say.

        paul
Received on Tue Sep 28 2004 - 17:13:02 BST