Editing C (programming language) (section)

==== B ====
{{main|B (programming language)}}
Thompson wanted a programming language for developing utilities for the new platform. He first tried writing a [[Fortran]] compiler, but he soon gave up the idea and instead created a cut-down version of the recently developed [[systems programming language]] called [[BCPL]]. The official description of BCPL was not available at the time,<ref name="NFDsZ">{{cite web |url=https://www.lysator.liu.se/c/dmr-on-histories.html |first=Dennis |last=Ritchie |title=BCPL to B to C |website=lysator.liu.se |access-date=September 10, 2019 |archive-date=December 12, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191212221532/http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/dmr-on-histories.html |url-status=live }}</ref> and Thompson modified the syntax to be less 'wordy' and similar to a simplified [[ALGOL]] known as SMALGOL.<ref name="Ars">{{Cite web |last=Jensen |first=Richard |date=December 9, 2020 |title="A damn stupid thing to do"—the origins of C |url=https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/12/a-damn-stupid-thing-to-do-the-origins-of-c/ |access-date=March 28, 2022 |website=Ars Technica |language=en-us |archive-date=March 28, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220328143845/https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/12/a-damn-stupid-thing-to-do-the-origins-of-c/ |url-status=live }}</ref> He called the result [[B (programming language)|''B'']],<ref name="sigplan" /> describing it as "BCPL semantics with a lot of SMALGOL syntax".<ref name=Ars /> Like BCPL, B had a [[bootstrapping]] compiler to facilitate porting to new machines.<ref name=Ars /> Ultimately, few utilities were written in B because it was too slow and could not take advantage of PDP-11 features such as [[byte]] addressability.