8 May
2010
8 May
'10
1:03 a.m.
On Fri, 7 May 2010, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
There are a few things that lend evidence to these
statements, none of
which are likely verifiable...
1. that is how Valtrep was introduced to me (ok, so it's hearsay)
2. more importantly - the structure of the language - and this is more
telling.
It's quite easy to identify a more primitive version of a language when
compared to a more modern one.
Syntax, functions, scope, definitions, everything about it.
Now THAT is much more credible. Dan has now acknowledged that some of the
source information that he was given could be flawed.
Valtrep was introduced to Dan as being a/THE predecessor of FORTRAN. Dan
is merely honestly passing on what was told TO him. The person who TOLD
Dan that may have been mistaken ("That's what they told me"), exaggerating
("Oh, yeah. This machine predates the existence of DEC",. . . ), or
lying.
How accurate are the details we were told about the "PDQ FORTRAN"
that we used on a 1620 in a college in 1967? Was that even really a 1401
in the next room, or some related model?
20+ years later, I was given a damaged 24" disk platter, and told that it
came from THAT 1401. Recently folk with far more experience on those
machines have told me "no way", and that therefore what I had been telling
my students for recent years wasn't accurate.
In terms of being noticably more primitive, let me offer a hypothesis of
an honest way that Dan could be mistaken: It is not at all uncommon for
universities to proudly use software, including compilers, that were
written by students there. Such student written materials may be quite a
bit cruder, and lacking many refinements. Did your first attempt at
writing a C compiler include floating point? It may not always be
feasable to differentiate between earlier software V modern early efforts
by talented programming students. After all, that seems to be how we
ended up with the UCSD Pascal and P-System, in which certain
characteristics are noticably more primitive than much of the commercial
software of the time, while certain other characteristics may be novel and
innovative.
What was the purported relationship between Valtrep and "Speed-Coder"?
We may never know all of the details, and we've seen how WWW is still
extremely porous in its information.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com