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Handwritten coding sheets for Burroughs 205 Algol (1960) [pdf]

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Re: Handwritten coding sheets for Burroughs 205 Algol (1960) [pdf]

#11

Post by nickpsecurity »

defvar wrote: post #5

Another interesting read related: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/B5000-AlgolRWaychoff.html#7

Thank you for that link because this quote is so good!

"It was becoming clear to me that Dr. Forsythe and Dr. Harroit wanted a B5000. But the best that Burroughs would offer was about a 40% discount. IBM was offering them the world to take an IBM 7090. Finally, IBM said that they would give Stanford the 7090 for free plus a gift of $900000 that could be used to build a new computer center. Stanford had a Burroughs 220 and IBM was determined to dislodge us. Stanford accepted the offer and used $400000 to build the computer center and $500000 to buy a B5000. So IBM had unwittingly paid Stanford to buy a B5000, much to their dismay. "

First, a nice illustration of shady practices that get shoddy tech to dominant market share. Windows had its share, too. Second, a rare illustration of it backfiring in an epic way. That the inferior, pretend-to-be-first, mainframe company bought them The Real Deal by mistake is just hard to top. It's better than when Microsoft was called out on NT Server's alleged superiority over AS/400's by pointing out they ran their whole business on an AS/400. These moments just don't happen enough.

The Fortran vs Algol vs people who open mail moment was great, too.

Re: Handwritten coding sheets for Burroughs 205 Algol (1960) [pdf]

#12

Post by nickpsecurity »

pjmlp wrote: post #8

Great information both from the linked document and the fellow posts, thanks to all for sharing. I follow with great interest everything Burroughs related, specially their approaches to safe programming.

You got to see the one linked in the parent to the comment below. I'm linking the comment since it has the highlight:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12466890

Re: Handwritten coding sheets for Burroughs 205 Algol (1960) [pdf]

#13

Post by fernly »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #11
defvar wrote: post #5

Another interesting read related: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/B5000-AlgolRWaychoff.html#7

Thank you for that link because this quote is so good! "It was becoming clear to me that Dr. Forsythe and Dr. Harroit wanted a B5000. But the best that Burroughs would offer was about a 40% discount. IBM was offering them the world to take an IBM 7090. Finally, IBM said that they would give Stanford the 7090 for free plus a gift of $900000 that could be used to build a new computer center. Stanford had a Burroughs 22…

Another pretty good quote about the young Don Knuth:

"We had written our [compiler] in STAR 0, the only assembler that Burroughs supported on the 205. Our compiler took one hour and 45 minutes to assemble. The first week of don's project he spent in writing his own assembler. He could assemble his compiler in 45 minutes. We were green with envy."

That's practical, right? He had limited computer time, and since every change meant a re-assembly, the obvious answer to quicker turnaround was to write a faster assembler...

Re: Handwritten coding sheets for Burroughs 205 Algol (1960) [pdf]

#14

Post by pjmlp »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #12
pjmlp wrote: post #8

Great information both from the linked document and the fellow posts, thanks to all for sharing. I follow with great interest everything Burroughs related, specially their approaches to safe programming.

You got to see the one linked in the parent to the comment below. I'm linking the comment since it has the highlight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12466890

Thanks, I had read it already. :)

Re: Handwritten coding sheets for Burroughs 205 Algol (1960) [pdf]

#15

Post by aap_ »

daly wrote: post #7

Yeah I used to code like that a lot. The next step was to work out the "core layout" for the "overlay loader". There wasn't enough memory to keep the whole program resident at once so you had to invoke the loader to bring in the next piece. There was a "front panel" on every computer that showed the registers and memory. You could "single step" through your program to see what was in the registers. When DEC shipped t…

> When DEC shipped the PDP-11 series the front panel was gone

That's not true. The earlier models definitely had front panels. Only the very latest had reduced or no front panels.

Re: Handwritten coding sheets for Burroughs 205 Algol (1960) [pdf]

#17

Post by nickpsecurity »

fernly wrote: post #13
nickpsecurity wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for that link because this quote is so good! "It was becoming clear to me that Dr. Forsythe and Dr. Harroit wanted a B5000. But the best that Burroughs would offer was about a 40% discount. IBM was offering them the world to take an IBM 7090. Finally, IBM said that they would give Stanford the 7090 for free plus a gift of $900000 that could be used to build a new computer center. Stanford had a Burroughs 22…

Another pretty good quote about the young Don Knuth: "We had written our [compiler] in STAR 0, the only assembler that Burroughs supported on the 205. Our compiler took one hour and 45 minutes to assemble. The first week of don's project he spent in writing his own assembler. He could assemble his compiler in 45 minutes. We were green with envy." That's practical, right? He had limited computer time, and since every…

Yeah, that's a good one. I wonder if something like HLA would've helped them back then:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Level_Assembly

Maybe it with s-expressions and Wirth-style compilation. Might have made those iterations pretty fast with lots of efficiency. The HLL's too heavy to compile could be mapped to it by hand if they wanted.

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