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The Origins of Burroughs Extended Algol [pdf]
- 082349872349872 4y agoSo much more than an Algol origins story: includes references to Mass Spec machines, vacuum tubes, early computer IP battles, Barton, and Knuth.
- DougMerritt 4y ago"Extended Algol has always been the primary language for MCP systems, extending back to the Burroughs B5000 of 1963. No doubt more lines of code have been written in COBOL for these systems, but most of the really significant code has been written in Algol or specialized languages derived directly from Algol. You can't be considered to be a master programmer for MCP systems unless you are also a master Algol programmer. It's our assembler language, our systems language, and for some of us, our everyday, go-to, application development language" Today many programmers love Linux/BSD/etc, before that many were especially fond of Sun Microsystems, before that DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation, of DEC-10 / PDP-11 / PDP-8 etc fame)... ...and before all of those, Burroughs. I read that IBM made virtual memory popular (which required educating customers), but Burroughs actually invented it. And Burroughs made fancy architectures that were Algol specific. And so on. All back in the 1960s, even the early 1960s.
- DougMerritt 4y agoThe first page references "MCP" which I had to look up. It's "Master Control Program -- from either the Tron movies, or from Unisys (originally Burroughs), depending on who you believe. Burroughs MCP: "In 1961, the MCP was the first OS written exclusively in a high-level language (HLL). The Burroughs Large System (B5000 and successors) were unique in that they were designed with the expectation that all software..." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_MCP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_MCP