About programming, a general question

[Doug]

On 12/20/2010 5:17 PM, Joep L. Blom wrote:
> On 20/12/10 15:08, Boggess Rod wrote:
>>> Message: 5
>>> In 1968 (or a year earlier) DEC (Digital Equipment Society) the
>> producer
>>> of the 12- and 18 (and 36-) bit computers (resp. PDP-8, PDP-9 and
>>> PDP-10) delivered with their products (at least the PDP-8) a BASIC-like
>>> program called FOCAL (FOrmula CALculation) that was more advanced than
>>> BASIC as it had many of the concepts of FORTRAN but was - as was BASIC
>> -
>>> an interpreted language which, in those days, took a much longer time
>> to
>>> run than compiled programs.
>>> Of course most programs were written in FORTRAN (which was standard in
>>> those days) and FOCAL was only for play and for small quick and dirty
>>> programs.
>>> I wonder of others from the "oldies" on this list has reminiscences of
>>> that language.
>>> Joep
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Thank you! I was just talking with my 20-something office mate about
>> this, but couldn't remember the language. Do you remember a similar one
>> used by HP? Couldn't remember that one, either.
>
/snip/
In the early 70s, I was working at a company called Maxson, In Great 
River, NY. There were a few computer "opportunities" there--an off-
premises main-frame, accessible by acoustic modem and Teletype, with 
local storage being on punched paper tape,  a "Trash-80" Radio Shack 
device used by one of the secretaries (the rest still had to use 
typewriters) and an HP machine that I seem to remember used cassette 
tape for storage, and ran what was called HP Basic. One of the other 
engineering groups owned it, and if you were in another group (me)
and asked real nice, they would let you use it. I used the off-
premises machine a couple of times, and programmed that in the BASIC 
that seemed to be standard in those days--I don't remember that MS
BASIC, when it appeared, or its successor, GW BASIC, was any different, 
but let's face it, this was almost 40 years ago! I do remember that the 
HP Basic had a couple features that "standard" basic didn't have, but
I can't remember what they were.

--doug
-- 
Blessed are the peacemakers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. 
  --A.M. Greeley