11 May
2005
11 May
'05
6:42 a.m.
Subject: Re: Infocom on PDP-11
From: Tom Jennings <tomj at wps.com>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 22:10:08 -0700 (PDT)
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at
classiccmp.org>
As far as sophistication goes -- a better measure than
simply how
clever or nifty a thing is -- how far did it advance the state of
the art? Good Algol's in the early 1960's look like stuff robbed
from the far-flung future. A lot of the "compilers" from that era
we'd today call p-code interpreters (terminology changes) but man,
Algol60 is neat stuff. (Not the bloated monster Algol68 (I think
it was) became.
Having programmed in algol on the PDP-8 back when it was a real
eye opener for a new basic programmer. The PDP-8 Timeshare didn't
know strings.
Allison
11 May
11 May
6:54 a.m.
>>>> "Allison" == Allison
<ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> writes:
Allison> Having programmed in algol on the PDP-8 back when it was a
Allison> real eye opener for a new basic programmer. The PDP-8
Allison> Timeshare didn't know strings.
Standard Algol 60 doesn't either -- it has string constants but not
string variables. Those are a Burroughs extension, and PDP-8 Algol is
a Burroughs Extended Algol subset.
paul
11:57 a.m.
On Wed, 11 May 2005, Paul Koning wrote:
Standard Algol 60 doesn't either -- it has string
constants but not
string variables. Those are a Burroughs extension, and PDP-8 Algol is
a Burroughs Extended Algol subset.
Yeah, strings are pretty new-fangled. Standardized character sets,
cheap memory, and human I/O devices are needed.
I'd forgotten (somehow) that FORTRAN IV didn't know strings until
I wrote a "more" program as an exercise on the Nova. Surprise!
FORTRAN V had 'em (as a hack job on integer arrays) so I used
that.
8:56 a.m.
On Wed, 11 May 2005 15:42:36 +0200, Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net>
wrote:
We never used goto in the way we saw in FORTRAN and COBOL programs, Algol
60 was a nicely block-structured language.
I did not see any problems with lack of strings, either. We used integer
arrays for the little text manipulation we needed.
The big stumbling block was the lack of proper input and output, and Knuth
found a workable solution for that.
Of course, on a CDC-3300 running MASTER the resources were ample for even
really complex programs.
--
Bj?rn
Subject: Re: Infocom on PDP-11
From: Tom Jennings <tomj at wps.com>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 22:10:08 -0700 (PDT)
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only"
<cctech at classiccmp.org>
As far as sophistication goes -- a better measure
than simply how
clever or nifty a thing is -- how far did it advance the state of
the art? Good Algol's in the early 1960's look like stuff robbed
from the far-flung future. A lot of the "compilers" from that era
we'd today call p-code interpreters (terminology changes) but man,
Algol60 is neat stuff. (Not the bloated monster Algol68 (I think
it was) became.
Having programmed in algol on the PDP-8 back when it was a real
eye opener for a new basic programmer. The PDP-8 Timeshare didn't
know strings.
7166
days inactive
7166
days old
3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
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ajp166＠bellatlantic.net -
bv＠norbionics.com -
pkoning＠equallogic.com -
tomj＠wps.com