30 Dec
2005
30 Dec
'05
1:55 p.m.
On 12/30/2005 at 3:41 PM bpope at wordstock.com wrote:
What do these coding forms look like?
They all bear a family resemblance to one another, usually green. Here's
one for IBM FORTRAN:
http://www.atkielski.com/PDF/data/fortran.pdf
Note one aspect of card-type programming that's largely a dim memory:
Fixed-width fields. That "C" for comment in FORTRAN goes in column 6, not
5, not 1, not 7. Similarly, columns 73-80 are ignored by the compiler and
1-5 are reserved for statement labels. Statements exclusive of the label,
start between column 7 and 72. A lot of languages, had more stringent
placement requirements.
An "80-80" listing was basically a printout of the card deck, column for
colum. I think the term dates from the unit-record era, when a plugboard
for something like a 407 accounting machine could be programmed to mix
things up any way you wanted. I used to use one for FOTRAN that added
spaces between columns 5-6, 6-7 and 72-73. Made things easier to read.
This wasn't as bad as it sounds. If you took the time to punch up a "drum
card" for the 026/029 keypunch, the "tab" key would zip you to the next
field. Most programmers I knew kept a drum card (usually assembly for
program 1 and FORTRAN for program 2) with their basic survival supplies
(instruction reference card being an essential other).
What is "abend"?
Abnormal end of program; a crash or ungraceful termination (e.g., the
operator killed it because it was in an infinite loop). Depending on your
termination options, you would receive a one page short form dump (the
registers and the area around the last PC value) or a dump of your entire
program area (could be a signifcant part of a box of paper).
If you were an operating systems type, your abend dump was a "deadstart
dump"; that is, a special program loaded as part of the boot process that
would give you as much of the machine state before reboot as possible. If
you were one of those unfortunates who were working on CDC 6600 with 4 MW
of ECS, the whole shebang was about a box of paper, including PP dumps.
If you were debugging a multi-machine cluster, it could run to more.
The debugging tools in that case were paperclips and highlighters in
various colors--and lots of coffee.
Cheers,
Chuck