9 Nov
2006
9 Nov
'06
2:33 p.m.
On 11/9/06, Warren Wolfe <wizard at voyager.net> wrote:
Oh, yeah... wierd is the best word for it.
I would be
interested to hear about other languages people used on
pdp-11's however :-)
I've got a weird one: MUMPS. It's kind of a mutant
OS/DB/programming language. It allows all sorts of stuff, including
self-modifying code. It's GREAT on list manipulations, and truly horrid
at any kind of math. It was originally designed to deal with patient
records for hospitals, and smells a lot like BASIC. Anyway, Brad, is that
weird enough for you? I used it on PDP 11/23 and PDP 11/45 machines.
I was working at a small shop that did PCs and PDP-11s in 1988... we
had a customer bring in a MicroPDP-11/53 for a disk upgrade. We were
all ready for it until we turned it on and found out it was running
MUMPS. We did eventually upgrade the disk for the customer, but it
took a lot longer to puzzle out how to do it (I think my boss was
expecting RT-11 or MicroRSX).
I never programmed a MUMPS system, but my recollection of the disk
upgrade was that it was all menu driven, and there was no (obvious)
way to drop to a command line.
-ethan