From http://www.moserware.com/2008/03/computing-history-matters.html:

(Quoting Bjarne Stroustrup):
"SIMULA's class-based type system was a huge plus, but its run-time 
performance was hopeless:

The poor runtime characteristics were a function of the language and its 
implementation. The overhead problems were fundamental to SIMULA and 
could not be remedied. The cost arose from several language features and 
their interactions: run-time type checking, guaranteed initialization of 
variables, concurrency support, and garbage collection..."

(And Jeff Moser writes):
"I find it amusing that a lot of the "new" ideas in languages and 
runtimes are just bringing back things from Simula that C++ took out."

It boggles the mind, doesn't it?  That we've spent fourty years 
discovering the necessity of features that Simula had, but were 
considered too advanced for the time?

Kind of like how many algorithms in CG were actually written about in 
the 70s, but computers were too slow to implement them realtime until now.

-- 
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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