[HN Gopher] BCPL (2022)
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       BCPL (2022)
        
       Author : AlexeyBrin
       Score  : 10 points
       Date   : 2025-06-29 12:18 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cl.cam.ac.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cl.cam.ac.uk)
        
       | ColinWright wrote:
       | Much of the computational aspect of my PhD was written in
       | BCPL[0], it's nice to see it's still alive and running.
       | 
       | Greybeard story time:
       | 
       | I learned BCPL when competing in a CoNeutron[1][2][3]
       | competition. My player was written in Pascal but I kept getting
       | errors. Eventually I tracked down a compiler bug, produced a 20
       | line program that provoked it, and submitted it to the Computer
       | Lab. I got back a standard "We'll look into it, but it's probably
       | a bug in your program."
       | 
       | About 30 minutes later I got another email, this one said: "Wow,
       | it is a compiler bug ... congratulations! But it won't get
       | fixed."
       | 
       | So I learned BCPL, transliterated the CoNeutron player code into
       | it, and it immediately ran about 10 times faster and became
       | effectively unbeatable. My player even beat David Seal[4][5]'s
       | player running on then new ARM processors ... details of which
       | were confidential, and never fully revealed.
       | 
       | Fun times.
       | 
       | =================
       | 
       | [0] Other bits were written in ForTran, zed line editor, and
       | batch-control, all running on an IBM3084Q with Phoenix as the OS.
       | 
       | [1] It was intended to be a Neutron competition, but the rules
       | were incorrectly explained.
       | 
       | [2] http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/coneutron.html
       | 
       | [3] https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/CoNeutron.html
       | 
       | [4] https://davidseal.muchloved.com/
       | 
       | [5]
       | https://www.informit.com/authors/bio/1e767638-32b7-4c7b-81c8...
       | 
       | [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(computer)
        
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       (page generated 2025-07-02 23:00 UTC)