[nomenclature] systems language

[Don]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Iain Buclaw wrote:
>> == Quote from Walter Bright (newshound2 at digitalmars.com)'s article
>>> div0 wrote:
>>>> There's nothing special about a systems language; it's just they have
>>>> explicit facilities that make certain low level functionality easier to
>>>> implement. You could implement an OS in BASIC using PEEK/POKE if you 
>>>> mad
>>>> enough.
>>> I suppose it's like the difference between porn and art. It's 
>>> impossible to
>>> write a bureaucratic rule to distinguish them, but it's easy to tell the
>>> difference just by looking at the two. "I know it when I see it!"
>>
>> Also known as the Elephant test: "is hard to describe, but instantly 
>> recognisable
>> when spotted".
> 
> Yeah. I think it's a waste of our time to try and define what a systems 
> programming language is.
> 
> For example, sure, you can write a gc in Java. The problem is, it is not 
> a useful gc. Ditto for anything else "but you can do that in this 
> non-systems language, so your rule is wrong."

Did the term "systems programming language" exist before C? I mean, asm 
isn't a "systems programming language", it's asm!
Seems to me that it's a market segment term, which just means "competes 
with C".