3 ms·

Occam was the native INMOS provided programming language.

pdfernhout 7y ago
I programmed in Occam for a time. It used two spaces for indentationally-significant code which I thought a great idea then -- and which is one reason I liked Python and took easily to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam_(programming_language) For a time around 1986-1987 I had several Transputer boards in a robot lab I worked in at Princeton University. I liked the INMOS sale pitch that someday you could have a transputer at every robot joint. Something similar is relatively easily accomplished now using various serial connections between microcontrollers -- even if it might still be easier to just run cables to the joints from boards elsewhere. That combination of Transputer boards (including several loaner boards from another lab on campus which has got them related to NSA-funded signal processing stuff) for a time gave me the most powerful computer on the Princeton campus in terms of total memory and CPU cycles -- even if the IBM 308X mainframe in the computer center no doubt had more total I/O capacity. One other thing I liked about transputers was the (for the time) high speed serial links between them which could also go to special chips to read or write parallel data. I used such chips to interface a network of transputers to the teach pendant of an Hitachi A4 industrial robot so they could essentially press the buttons on the pendant to drive the robot around. Interesting how modern USB in a way is essentially just a serial transputer link. A PU undergrad student I helped used that setup for a project to use sensing whiskers to "feel" where objects were (inspired by a robotics magazine article I had seen by a group in Australia who had done that for a different robot). While transputers not supporting C was an issue early on, another issue was just that Occam did not easily support recursion. Transputer at the start also did not have standard libraries of code then like C had from Unix. And also transputers were expensive (as was the software development kit) and also they were not easy to get in the USA with various supply chain issues and delays. Occam was mind-expanding in its own way. I had previously networked a couple of Commodore VICs and a Commodore 64 for a robot project (via modems to an IBM mainframe) for my undergraduate senior project at Princeton a couple of years earlier using assembler, BASIC, and C -- so the transputers with Occam were a big step up from that conceptually. Still, practically I had gotten the Commodore equipment plus a parallel code simulator (a VM in C) I wrote for the IBM mainframe running under VMUTS to do more interesting stuff -- perhaps because I had years of experience programming in those other languages by then whereas Occam was so different and I did not spend that much time with it before leaving that job. Even without Occam and transputers, that robot lab job was the best paying job working for someone else I ever would have in many ways as far as autonomy, mastery, and purpose -- but I did not appreciate it then as it was my first real job beyond college and I figured the grass would be greener somewhere else -- not realizing that grass tends to be greener where you water it. Thanks for creating such a great working situation for me, Alain!

I programmed in Occam for a time. It used two spaces for indentationally-significant code which I thought a great idea then -- and which is one reason I liked Python and took easily to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam_(programming_language) For a time around 1986-1987 I had several Transputer boards in a robot lab I worked in at Princeton University. I liked the INMOS sale pitch that someday you could have a transputer at every robot joint. Something similar is relatively easily accomplished now using various serial connections between microcontrollers -- even if it might still be easier to just run cables to the joints from boards elsewhere. That combination of Transputer boards (including several loaner boards from another lab on campus which has got them related to NSA-funded signal processing stuff) for a time gave me the most powerful computer on the Princeton campus in terms of total memory and CPU cycles -- even if the IBM 308X mainframe in the computer center no doubt had more total I/O capacity. One other thing I liked about transputers was the (for the time) high speed serial links between them which could also go to special chips to read or write parallel data. I used such chips to interface a network of transputers to the teach pendant of an Hitachi A4 industrial robot so they could essentially press the buttons on the pendant to drive the robot around. Interesting how modern USB in a way is essentially just a serial transputer link. A PU undergrad student I helped used that setup for a project to use sensing whiskers to "feel" where objects were (inspired by a robotics magazine article I had seen by a group in Australia who had done that for a different robot). While transputers not supporting C was an issue early on, another issue was just that Occam did not easily support recursion. Transputer at the start also did not have standard libraries of code then like C had from Unix. And also transputers were expensive (as was the software development kit) and also they were not easy to get in the USA with various supply chain issues and delays. Occam was mind-expanding in its own way. I had previously networked a couple of Commodore VICs and a Commodore 64 for a robot project (via modems to an IBM mainframe) for my undergraduate senior project at Princeton a couple of years earlier using assembler, BASIC, and C -- so the transputers with Occam were a big step up from that conceptually. Still, practically I had gotten the Commodore equipment plus a parallel code simulator (a VM in C) I wrote for the IBM mainframe running under VMUTS to do more interesting stuff -- perhaps because I had years of experience programming in those other languages by then whereas Occam was so different and I did not spend that much time with it before leaving that job. Even without Occam and transputers, that robot lab job was the best paying job working for someone else I ever would have in many ways as far as autonomy, mastery, and purpose -- but I did not appreciate it then as it was my first real job beyond college and I figured the grass would be greener somewhere else -- not realizing that grass tends to be greener where you water it. Thanks for creating such a great working situation for me, Alain!