topic Re: Can someone settle a bet? in Archicad C++ API

Can someone settle a bet?

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 09:44:06 GMT

Well - not REALLY a bet... however one of my coworkers appears convinced - or had HEARD - that ArchiCAD's kernel (my words) was written in BASIC - and thus assumed that it is also COMPILED in BASIC.

I'd have assumed that the original program was written and compiled in either FORTRAN (such was the fashion at the time, no?) or C. Can you solve this question - just for the sake of our curiosity.

thanks
Jonathan

Re: Can someone settle a bet?

TomWaltz — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 09:20:16 GMT

From my understanding, kind of, but not really.

The Object Libraries are written in GDL, Geometric Description Language, which is just BASIC, with a bunch of custom commands/functions added in.

The actual Archicad program is done in a strange combination of C and C++, the former for older functions in the program, the latter for newer ones and many add-ons. It is compiled in Visual Studio for Windows and Codewarrior for Apple.

I cannot say what the original was done in.

Re: Can someone settle a bet?

Karl Ottenstein — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 19:01:11 GMT

I have no idea. But, I'd be extremely surprised if the kernel was written in Basic.

The first versions of ArchiCAD were for, what, the Apple II? I suspect to get any kind of performance back then, with limited memory/etc, that they used assembly language.

Fortran would be a complete surprise, as there is nothing about Fortran that is suitable for the development of something like ArchiCAD. C has been around for longer than ArchiCAD itself, and so I suspect that even the original code was C.

As far as we are told, AC has been rewritten over recent years, and so based on the API, as Tom says, we must assume that it is a combination of C and C++.

As to resolving your bet ... someone from GS will have to reveal the truth. 😉

Karl

Re: Can someone settle a bet?

Ralph Wessel — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 19:23:45 GMT

JD wrote:
I'd have assumed that the original program was written and compiled in either FORTRAN (such was the fashion at the time, no?) or C.

It was almost certainly written in C. The first version was written for the early Macs, and no suitable flavour of BASIC was available.

Other possible ingredients are Pascal (popular on the early Mac OS) or assembler. Fortran is unlikely as it would have been difficult to leverage the Mac OS API effectively.

Re: Can someone settle a bet?

Rob — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 23:05:48 GMT

I think it was PASCAL...
"1984 In 1984, a Hungarian physicist, Gabor Bajor, smuggled two Macs into his country. At the time, ownership of personal computers was illegal under Communist rule. Using Pascal, he and a teenager, Tamas Hajas worked to write a 3D CAD program for the Mac which will be the beginning of Graphsoft Company"

check it out at:
http://mbinfo.mbdesign.net/CAD1980.htm

I am not sure if it's a reliable source though.

Re: Can someone settle a bet?

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 02:43:59 GMT

I don't think Diehl Graphsoft and Graphisoft are the same company..

Re: Can someone settle a bet?

Rob — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 03:03:33 GMT

I don't think Diehl Graphsoft and Graphisoft are the same company..

I think it's just typos in the text, names are correct - Gabor Bojar (misspelt as well) and Tamas Hajas.

Re: Can someone settle a bet?

Karl Ottenstein — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 03:36:24 GMT

Rob wrote:
I think it was PASCAL...

Good searching, Rob! And, my favorite language for many years, before Modula 2, and then ...

Here's that text on a another web site, but I don't know why it does not give Tamas credit there.

http://www.upfrontezine.com/travel/budapest.htm

Karl

Re: Can someone settle a bet?

Rob — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 03:52:20 GMT

Assembler for Motorola 68xxx was my choice those days discovering preemptive multitasking with Commodore Amiga and OS Amiga Workbench. I just can not believe I was able to actually program anything in that crazy code, using registers, flags, effective addresses, bit tesing etc..

Re: Can someone settle a bet?

Greg Kmethy — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 13:02:00 GMT

As far as I know - altough I was in secondary school then... - early ArchiCAD versions were written in Pascal, and by the time the Windows version came out, it was re-written in C.

Re: Can someone settle a bet?

James Murray — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 15:04:39 GMT

Perhaps the BASIC idea comes from GDL, which is very BASIC-like. I think there must have been a time when GDL was all there was. (.gsm = GraphiSoft Model?)

The topic is very interesting; it would be great if a GS historian could post the whole story sometime.

Hey, 400.

Re: Can someone settle a bet?

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 20:52:41 GMT

Happy 400th James, have a bite of that cake....