Some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler (2006)

[Veserv]

Just for some context, the MPW C compiler that produced those messages was actually not developed internally at Apple, but was rather done by Green Hills Software [1] under contract as mentioned on the wikipedia page [2] and its source [3] which is funnily enough about this exact same topic.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Hills_Software

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Wor...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20140528005901/http://lists.appl...

[kabdib]

I forget what happened to the Green Hills folks, but the official MPW C compiler was an offshoot of the MPW Pascal compiler, and was written by Roger Lawrence at Apple in about a year (around 1987-1988) largely as a reaction to what he thought was a terrible contract.

The Green Hills folks were likewise upset at Roger's effort. "Anyone who says they can write a compiler in a year should be fired." Roger himself held the same opinion, a couple of years later :-)

I sat next to Roger while he wrote that thing, he was in the next cubie over (I was working on the MPW linker and some other tools). He types really fast.

[dls2016]

I forget why I went into their building, but I always remember a giant T-rex skull in their entryway. I'm not making this up, am I?

I did find this press release, but it really just raises more questions than answers anything. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ubm-electronics-and...

[watersb]

MPW is the Macintosh Programmer's Workbench.

I had forgotten about these.

I think my first real push with MPW was using it as an environment to host the AT&T C++ compiler, which at that time was still a bunch of preprocessor macros written by Bjarne himself.

[JKCalhoun]

I was introduced to MPW when I started at Apple in 1995. I started on Quickdraw GX (if anyone remembers that).

Not specifically related to MPW, more about the times, a clean compile of the Quickdraw GX framework took something like eight hours. (Fortunately incremental builds were much quicker.) Nonetheless, it was common to kick off a clean build as you were leaving the office for the night.

Funny to think about that compiler compiling all night as I had dinner, watched a little cable TV, got some sleep....

[mistrial9]

I was a cfront beta site using MPW; for people that don't know, that was the self-compiling C++ from C, before the first AT&T C++ compiler, in the late 1980s.

[scroot]

I booted up MPW in an emulator last year to check it out. Definitely a unique experience. Very cool.

[unfocussed_mike]

Ahh, I saw the "too many errors on one line" report once when playing with MPW.

A very underrated, idiosyncratic, clever development environment, somehow more reminiscent of Poplog than anything else I've used.

[mastax]

Is anyone at Apple allowed to have a sense of humor anymore?

[Austin_Conlon]

As long as it doesn’t contravene the Apple Style Guide:

“Humor can enhance documentation by adding to a reader’s enjoyment and by helping to lighten the tone. Humor usually works best in examples, where it’s less likely to distract the reader. Be careful that your humor is in good taste—one reader’s joke can be another reader’s insult—and keep in mind that humor may not translate well in localized text.”

https://help.apple.com/applestyleguide/#/apsg9dac5903

[threeseed]

As a developer I don't want my compiler to be funny.

I want it to give helpful, accurate advice as succinctly as possible.

[memco]

Craig Federighi finds a way.

[nojito]

Their test OS for iPhone's is hilarious

https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/TigrisAni_15A93720r

[imoverclocked]

Absolutely.

[nyanpasu64]

> This label is the target of a goto from outside of the block containing this label AND this block has an automatic variable with an initializer

I get this issue a lot on modern compilers, when trying to write switch/macro-based coroutines (https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/coroutines.html) in C++. Does anyone have a workaround? (I hope it doesn't involve C++20 coroutines... I still don't understand them.)

[josephcsible]

If your variable is a class without a trivial default constructor, then you're out of luck. Otherwise, the workaround is to not initialize the variable, and to instead assign to it immediately after declaring it (e.g., replace "int x = 42;" with "int x; x = 42;").

[secabeen]

> " please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer"

Not possible any more!!!

[Infernal]

It's really expensive but they throw the rest of a new machine in with it as consolation.

EDIT: Sibling beat me by a couple minutes. DO great minds really think alike?

[abrowne]

Sure it is. It just comes with a new Mac.

[Someone]

https://www.apple.com/us/search/memory lists 10 products (for the 2018 Mac Mini, 2019 Mac Pro, and 2019/2020 5k iMac)

[smoldesu]

I'm not sure their memory pricing is competitive these days anyways.

[rjsw]

You can still buy RAM to go in 68k Macs, just not from Apple dealers.

[elahieh]

Original source: Tony Cunningham, rec.humor.funny, 7 August 1991

https://groups.google.com/g/rec.humor.funny/c/knG5ONlInXM/m/...

[fghorow]

MPW.

Object Pascal.

MacApp.

Ahh, memories. (Some of them are even _good_ memories! ;-) )

[vba616]

I remember when I compiled a "hello world" with some new OO framework, possibly MacApp, and it was something like 400K, to do nothing, and I thought that was outrageous and obviously much too bloated for real software.