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

[jonhohle]

I miss this kind of playfulness in computing.

When I was at Amazon my manager told me that several years earlier he was responsible for updating the 404 page so he scanned a picture of a cat his daughter drew and made that the body of the page. In 2009 when I started, that was still the image, but at some point someone must have noticed and replaced it with a stock photo of a dog. The asset was still called kayli-kitty.jpg, though. It’s since been changed again to rotating pictures and references to the original are gone.

[varun_ch]

This is really cool! The filename on certain Amazon 404 pages (eg. https://www.amazon.co.jp/404) is still kailey-kitty.gif (but the image has been replaced with a standard icon).

I also found this comment from him on a blog: https://www.davebellous.com/2006/09/25/what-the/#comment-290...

[hgs3]

> The compiler is 324k in size

Playfulness isn't the only thing we've lost. Software bloat has reached comedic levels.

[omoikane]

> picture of a cat

I couldn't find this elusive picture of a cat on archive.org, but I found this dog instead:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030113144310/https://www.amazo...

June 2016 appears to be when Amazon adopted the current error pages with the large dog images.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160612232820/http://www.amazon...

[bazbamduck]

Go load www.amazon.com and check the source right after </html> :)

[layer8]

Maybe the daughter sued for copyright infringement when she turned 18. ;)

Serious question: Is this possible when a guardian gave consent earlier?

[CalRobert]

Where does this playfulness persist? I miss it too.

[khiqxj]

> I miss this kind of playfulness in computing.

it's still right here every day when Firefox says "gah this tab crashed".

[AnonC]

> "Symbol table full - fatal heap error; please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer"

Ah, the old times when one could purchase a RAM upgrade or upgrade RAM after buying a computer. Now this would be:

"Symbol table full - fatal heap error; please go buy a new Mac with more RAM"

[grishka]

Not really. Classic Mac OS didn't support virtual memory so everything had to fit in RAM unless a program itself offloaded data it's not currently using to the disk. Modern OSes, however, all support swapping. Your compilation would continue, just much slower. To truly "run out of memory" on a modern computer, you have to fill up both the RAM and the disk.

[catiopatio]

I understand the arguments for unified RAM on a SoC, but it’s still a shame; even the new Mac Pro doesn’t have RAM slots.

[phendrenad2]

You can always use a PC if you want upgradeable RAM.

[LoganDark]

This is even more true today, because Apple Silicon Macs are able to store twice the amount of information in the same amount of memory, meaning that a paltry 8GB configuration can store 16GB of FizzBuzz boilerplate, 4 Google Chrome tabs, or 20% of the average node_modules.

[mkovach]

  "a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program" 

Ah, the joys of fun compiler messages. I miss those days. I remember getting one from a vendor compiler that was:

  "No! But they'll only let me warn you. Danger Will Robinson! Danger!"

and:

  "Really! If you are fussing around with void *, just go home or at least back to your editor!"

I think the IT manager kept that as a vendor just because of the message (the SDK was meh, but also fun!).

[jimmaswell]

Not much of a C programmer, what's the context around void* being a big deal?

[rickreynoldssf]

I was programming on MacOS (the original) since it was possible. I remember many of these error messages! Especially "Too many errors on one line (make fewer)".

...also remember 45 minute builds when a header file changed.

[w0mbat]

In those days I wrote exclusively system extensions, plug-ins and XCMDs, using a mix of 68k, C and Pascal. Each project was quite small, so compile time was never a problem and MPW was a paradise. My largest XCMD actually had bits in all 3 languages which MPW happily linked together, and some projects had various little blocks of code to stick in the same file, all of which could be automated easily.

I remember these error messages coming up and laughing out loud when I saw the rare ones. Nice work, whoever did it!

[bondolo]

I used this compiler for years and eventually came to be able to “decompile” the 68k object code it produced back to C code in my head on the fly unless the function was too large. Using MacNosy I could rebuild the C source for an app in usually only a couple of hours. I had a script that converted a MacNosy file of an app into an assembler file and rsrc file and I could translate functions to C one at a time while having a buildable app equivalent to the original. I originally used the tools for hacking games but sometimes used it to fix bugs.

The MPW C compiler code generation was so predictable in part because of the symmetry of the 68k instruction set. They wrote a simple compiler and it worked. For the most part effort was spent elsewhere. Since you could reasonably predict what code would be generated if you were unhappy with the code generation you fixed the source. I like that the javac compiler has a similar ethos, With similar effect. Once you know the patterns to use you can generate fairly close to optimal byte code.

[zabzonk]

My favourite syntax error message produced by the Glockenspiel C++ compiler (a cfront derived piece of junk that I used in a training company in the early 90s) was simply "core dumped". This was slightly tricky to explain to people already struggling with C++, and who had paid us money for the course.

[unnah]

The users could simply run a debugger to get a backtrace from the core file... then with some experience, they would learn to associate different hex addresses with different kinds of errors. No harm, no foul.

[13of40]

"Call me paranoid but finding '/*' inside this comment makes me suspicious"

That, Sir, is none of your business.

[Wowfunhappy]

...I kind of wish compilers supported nested block comments. So if there's a /* inside of a /*, it would take two */'s to end it.

Idk, maybe that would be a terrible idea in practice. But there are lots of instances where it would have saved me time.

[II2II]

Tangential to the content of the page: I really enjoyed how many MPW utilities generated output, including error messages, in the form of commands. Your terminal was an editor buffer, so you could cursor up (or click) on the appropriate line then press something like cmd-enter to pull up the file in question (among other things).

[cschmidt]

I think it was just the enter key to execute the selected text.

[ilaksh]

Hm. Sounds like Plan 9.

[bemusedthrow75]

"a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program"

I've seen this list so many times and this one makes me laugh out loud every single time.

[hulitu]

Much better than gcc's "Redefinition of ..." or "Static declaration follows non-static"

[Veserv]

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30238928

To inline my comment in the previous thread:

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...

[vincent-manis]

My favorite error message was produced by the Univac Fortran V compiler, circa 1970: “Warning: floating point equality tests are nugatory.” I pride myself on my vocabulary, but I had to use the dictionary.

[arnoldjm]

I recall from 1965 getting an error message message something like this from the Fortran complier on a Univac 1107 system after receiving too many error messages: "Do not attempt to learn Fortran using Monte Carlo method. Buy a manual in the user office."

[skipkey]

The old Clipper 5 compiler had some fun error messages. The two that I remember running into were “Ford Maverick Error”, and my personal favorite, “Carnage! Module name crushed in compilation disaster!”. I ran across both abusing its preprocessor.

[andrewf]

I learned to program on various dBase languages. That Clipper 5 preprocessor was quite the thing! It reminds me of https://research.swtch.com/shmacro but it met a real need, lowering a COBOL-like syntax to a C/Pascal-like one.

(dBase code looks like https://github.com/harbour/core/blob/master/tests/ntx.prg , and https://github.com/harbour/core/blob/master/include/std.ch is an open-source reimplementation of Clipper's preprocessor definitions).

[monitron]

I’m so curious, what could a Ford Maverick error possibly signify?

[nickt]

That whole subdirectory is full of some old school internet humour.

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jasonh/personal/humor/

[d3psi]

alright, these are hilarious. i miss this playful attitude in modern-day software engineering, we need more of it.

also, the note on the copyright is hilarious.

[tom_]

> "...And the lord said, 'lo, there shall only be case or default labels inside a switch statement'"

Did it seriously not let you have a goto label inside a switch?! This seems like an odd restriction, as all 3 are the same kind of thing.

[bear8642]

They're different enough that you can't goto a case or default label.

[OnlyMortal]

I really loved MPW Shell.

Been able to have a worksheet with random shell commands I’d built up, triple-clicking a line and hitting enter to run the selection.

It was quite a thing.

[gjvc]

I had NFI what MPW was until I read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer%27s_Works...

[nigwil_]

MPW had an interesting About box animation too. I recorded this back in 2011 using vMac emulator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJn3qxK9Br0

[mistrial9]

there were also MetroWerks bindings for MPW, long ago, but Apple killed it with fire

[smoldesu]

Even in 2006, people knew provoking Apple's ire was a dangerous game.