On Sunday, 29 July 2012 at 22:22:33 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
On 7/27/2012 7:38 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
True, but I'm kind of shocked that anything 16-bit even still
exists. _32-bit_
is on its way out. I thought that 16-bit was dead _years_ ago.
I guess that
some embedded stuff must use it. But really, I wouldn't expect
the lack of 16-
bit support to be much of an impediment - if any at all - and
in the long run,
it'll mean absolutely nothing.
For those who may not realize it, C++ is simply not suitable
for 16 bit systems either. It theoretically supports 16 bit
code, but in practice, full C++ will never work on them.
So, you might ask, why was 16 bit C++ popular on 16 bit MSDOS
in the 80's? That was C++ before exception handling and RTTI,
both of which were unimplementable on 16 bit machines. (Yes,
you could do it, but the result was practically unusable.)
I remember using both features with Borland compilers.
But then I was around 16 years old and was not doing anything
serious
with C++, besides getting to know the language.
On those days, Turbo Pascal was my number one choice for serious
software.
C and 16 bits go reasonably well together, but even so, the
best programs were written all in asm.
