MacFormat 1995 May/macformat-024.iso/Shareware City/Developers/kvik/text/posting2/__headers__.txt

Text File | 1995-02-22 | 2.5 KB | 42 lines

computer was used interactively because it was connected to a teletype.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We used Siemens teletypes with
built-in paper tape units. We would never touch the computer at all, we
delivered all stuff on paper tape.  Neither would we submit anything without
the approval of our supervisor. The supervisor would occasionally print the
tape on his own tty to see that what we submitted was really the same as our
listing. He would check any program for errors as erroneous compiler runs
were costly! Compiled binaries were on paper tapes of a different color and
they never left the computer room.

Programs we typed ourselves were on white tape.
Runnable binaries (compiler output) were on green tape.
System programs (the compiler itself and the libraries) were on orange tape.
888 tapes (initialization dumps) were on pink tape.
Input data that we typed was on yellow tape.
Output data of computer programs was on blue tape.

It was really interesting to watch the operator while he was working. You
could see whether a compile job, an initialization job or a production job
was running by the colors of the tapes. Sometimes there were circuit boards of
torpedo launchers or radars in the computer room. In that case the
computer controlled submarine hardware was tested.

The fact that kvikkalkul didn't allow for comments was a feature of the
language that was highly emphasized. Some assemblers did allow for comments
and you could write code that did X and write in the comments that it really
did Y. That could be dangerous. Therefore kvikkalkul had no comments and one
had to study the code itself rather than relying on comments. Further the
language was designed such that it did not allow for self-modifying code.
Our supervisors were really paranoid about programs that modified their own
code and grew wild. That could happen with assembler and not with
kvikkalkul. Kvikkalkul was not designed to make it easy to write programs,
but rather to make it next to impossible to write programs that more or less
appeared to work without thinking. It was believed that a friendly language
would make sloppy programmers and in fact this turned out to be true....
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