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A comment on Xerox PARC Mesa Programming Language 5.0 (1979) [pdf].

Re:Xerox PARC Mesa Programming Language 5.0 (1979) [pdf] by bakul on Thursday January 20, 2022 @02:41AM (#30005944)
Back in those days you could write to Xerox PARC to request their Tech Reports and a few days later they’d show up in your (physical) mail box! I got quite a few reports that way, learned a bunch, and even did toy implementations of some things such as the RIP, SPP protocols and so on. I learned about RPC from Bruce Nelson’s thesis and got a chance to use it for a client in 1984!

I may still have this Mesa book somewhere.... On a quick rereading I realize it was basically a variation on Pascal, with a few things cleaned up or made more convenient.

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Re:Xerox PARC Mesa Programming Language 5.0 (1979) [pdf] by pholbrook on Monday January 24, 2022 @10:07AM (#30058498)
Yes! When I was a junior or senior in college, I went through the list of PARC reports and made a list of perhaps 20 or more of them I might like. I was very surprised to eventually get a book-sized box full of reports.

That lead me to an interest in Xerox, and when I got out of college I went to work for Xerox in El Segundo on the Star project.

I stayed there for 7 years, so I'd say the company got their money's worth out of sending a college student a bunch of tech reports.

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