Strange and wonderful prog names
Greg Goss
name of GNU is interesting. Some of us are fascinated by recursion.
GNU stands for Gnu is Not Unix, where GNU stands for ...
.../greg
Michael Korcuska
How about FRED, the "emacs-style" editor used in Allegro Common Lisp on
the Mac?
FRED Resembles Emacs Deliberately.....
michael
korc...@ils.nwu.edu
Randal Schwartz
There was a project inside Tektronix that never saw the light of day.
Its name was TINA, which stood for "TINA Is No Acronym".
And then there's MUNG, which stands for "MUNG Until No Good"
(according to the Teco startup text).
Just another non-acronym,
--
/=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ==========\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III |
| mer...@iwarp.intel.com ...!any-MX-mailer-like-uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn |
\=Cute Quote: "Welcome to Portland, Oregon, home of the California Raisins!"=/
Peter Deutsch
Yup, people who implement UNIX-clones seem obsessed with
this. There's also XINU, from the book by Douglas Comer
(Yup, it stands for "Xinu Is Not UNIX". Also, try reading
it backwards...) Then there's MINIX, from the Tannenbaum
book, although I don't recall that that is anything clever
and can't find anything in the book.
Here's a related question, what's the most deeply nested
acronym you've heard of, barring recrusive acronyms with
no stopping condition (obviously, the recursive stuff
like GNU nests forever, or until your stack overflows :-)
One I've already mentioned was HASP - "Houston Automated
Spooling Program", where SPOOL is "Simultaneous Peripheral
Operatopns On Line" or some such.
So that's two levels deep. I was told by a mainframe type
that this was the _only_ nested acronym, which is
obviously rubbish, but what is the _deepest_ non-recursive
acronym? Anyone know one better than two?
- peterd
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
+-------+ Peter Deutsch McGill University
| u # u | pet...@cs.mcgill.ca School of Computer Science
|/\/\/\/|
| a a | "As God is my witness, Andy. I thought that turkeys
\ a / could fly!"
\___/ - Mr. Carlson, in WKRP in Cincinatti...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dik T. Winter
net quite a few years ago, bit that is similar):
FINE: Fine Is Not Emacs
THIEF: THief Isn't Even Fine
--
dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland
d...@cwi.nl
David Kuder
-> How about other creatively named programs? Perhaps (and preferably)
-> with a joke in the name or otherwise suitably obscure? I know lots in
-> UNIX, others? Maybe those with nested recursive acronyms (HASP -
-> Houston Automated Spool Program, SPOOL - Simultaneous Operations
-> [On|Off] Line. Something like that). Anyways, what's the weirdest
-> _you've_ heard or seen?
In article <19...@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu> korc...@ils.nwu.edu writes:
> How about FRED, the "emacs-style" editor used in Allegro Common Lisp on
> the Mac?
> FRED Resembles Emacs Deliberately.....
That brings to mind the editor I used on my first job: THIEF
This Here Isn't Even FINE
Well so what's FINE?
FINE Is Not Emacs
--
David A. Kuder Looking for enough time to get past patchlevel 1
415 438-2003 da...@indetech.com {uunet,sun,sharkey,pacbell}!indetech!david
Eric Hvozda
Korcuska) says:
>
>FRED Resembles Emacs Deliberately.....
Ayone out there a FOCUS user? Ever notice how close TED is to XEDIT? Very.
Infact, it's just a stripped down version of XEDIT. IBM did this with KEDIT
and ISPF also I have noticed. But TED is an IBI creation. Anyone else see
anyother look alike editor out there?
Ack!
Patrick Tufts
>In article <1990Sep27....@iwarp.intel.com> mer...@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) writes:
>>In article <33...@mindlink.UUCP>, a80@mindlink (Greg Goss) writes:
Lore has it that SNOBOL was so named by its author because it
"didn't stand a snow ball's chance in hell" of becoming widely used.
Pat
--
This .sig space for rent.
Ian G Batten
>
> How about FRED, the "emacs-style" editor used in Allegro Common Lisp on
> the Mac?
>
> FRED Resembles Emacs Deliberately.....
long traditions...lispms had ``eine'' (eine is not emacs) and ``zwei''
(zwei was eine initially).
ian
Arthur Evans
refering to the DoD-sponsored programming language that has been around
since about 1983.
The name Ada (and the name of the language is not ADA) refers to Ada
Augusta, Lady Lovelace. She was daughter of Lord Byron and a friend (or
lover) of George Babbage. She worked with Babbage on the Analytical
Engine and wrote much documentation for it. A good case can be made
that she was the world's first programmer.
It's interesting that development of what came to be called Ada started
in about 1975, with the Strawman requirements proposal. At the time
they had made a schedule, and they pretty much stayed on schedule till
about 1982 -- except for selecting a name for the language. That was
hard; I guess that designing the language was easier.
Art Evans
Philip Gladstone
>GNU stands for Gnu is Not Unix, where GNU stands for ...
On a similar note, ADA stands for "Acronym Describing Ada", where Ada stands for..
Philip Gladstone phi...@dle.dg.com
Development Lab Europe C=gb/AD=gold 400/PR=dgc/O=dle
Data General, Cambridge /SN=gladstone/GN=philip
England. +44 223-67600
Curt Sampson
Hmmm. COBOL stands for Common Business Oriented Language. Perhaps SNOBOL
stand for SNOB Oriented Language? :-)
cjs
--
Curt_S...@mindlink.UUCP (Vancouver, B.C., Canada)
{uunet|ubc-cs}!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!Curt_Sampson Data: (604) 687-6736
Curt_S...@p0.f740.n153.z1.fidonet.org Voice: (604) 687-3227
Michael Meissner
phi...@beeblebrox.dle.dg.com (Philip Gladstone) writes:
| In article <33...@mindlink.UUCP> a...@mindlink.UUCP (Greg Goss) writes:
| >GNU stands for Gnu is Not Unix, where GNU stands for ...
|
| On a similar note, ADA stands for "Acronym Describing Ada", where Ada stands for..
Sigh.... No ADA is not an acronym. It is named in honor of Ada
Lovelace whom is supposed to be the world's first programmer (for the
Babbage machine).
--
Michael Meissner email: meis...@osf.org phone: 617-621-8861
Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA, 02142
Do apple growers tell their kids money doesn't grow on bushes?
Tom Almy
>| Some of us are fascinated by recursion.
>There was a project inside Tektronix that never saw the light of day.
>Its name was TINA, which stood for "TINA Is No Acronym".
(I named that project, but the acronym wasn't original).
>And then there's MUNG, which stands for "MUNG Until No Good"
>(according to the Teco startup text).
More recursive names:
MINCE - Mince Is Not Completely Emacs.
MINT - Mint Is Not TRAC
Others:
APL - A Programming Language
JOVIAL - Jules Own Version of the International Algorithmic Language
SOAP - Symbolic Optimizing Assembler Program
SNOBOL, SPITBOL - Any guesses?
SPOOL - Simultaneous Peripheral Operation On Line, (so named because when
periperals were all off-line you would transfer data between the
peripheral and the central processor via a spool of magtape)
Tom Almy
to...@tekgvs.labs.tek.com
Standard Disclaimers Apply
Al Shing
#In article <33...@mindlink.UUCP>, a...@mindlink.UUCP (Greg Goss) writes:
#
#One I've already mentioned was HASP - "Houston Automated
#Spooling Program", where SPOOL is "Simultaneous Peripheral
#Operatopns On Line" or some such.
The original ASP (the forerunner of JES3) stood for Automated Spooling
Program. When HASP came along, it really stood for Half-ASP. IBM cleaned
up the name with the Houston acronym when it became it decided to make it
available to customers.
At least, that's the story I heard.
Al Shing
Jim Skea
(talk about esoteric?) called SHEEP: it's not an acronym, but it was a
devlopment of the earlier program, Lisp Algebraic Manipulator, called
(you guessed it) LAM.
Ho ho.
Anyone out there know of similar progressions (apart from the B->C->C++)?
--
Jim Skea :ji...@uk.ac.susx.syma
(or for all those who drive on the wrong side of the road)
Jim Skea :ji...@syma.susx.ac.uk (JANET)
Morten Ronseth
...and I thought GNU meant "Guaranteed Not Unix"...?
Morten.
--
====================================================================
Morten Lerskau Ronseth UUCP: mor...@qmw-cs.uucp
Dept. of Computer Science JANET: mor...@uk.ac.qmw.cs
Queen Mary and Westfield College ARPA: morten%qmw...@ucl-cs.arpa
Mile End Road Easylink: 19019285
London E1 4NS Tlf: 071 975 5220
England. Dept. fax: 081 980 6533
John Eaton
< One I've already mentioned was HASP - "Houston Automated
< Spooling Program", where SPOOL is "Simultaneous Peripheral
< Operatopns On Line" or some such.
I thought Spool refered to the early mainframe practice of
dumping output onto a Spool of tape that some peon carried
over and fed to the output device. You were able to keep the
big box humming without slowing it down for I/O.
John Eaton
!hpvcfs1!johne
Michael Meissner
writes:
| Noone has yet mentioned the computer algebra system for General Relativity
| (talk about esoteric?) called SHEEP: it's not an acronym, but it was a
| devlopment of the earlier program, Lisp Algebraic Manipulator, called
| (you guessed it) LAM.
|
| Ho ho.
|
| Anyone out there know of similar progressions (apart from the B->C->C++)?
The other standard progression is in parser generators:
yacc -> bison -> ox
(I think there was one more, but I can't remember it).
Laurence Doering
I co-wrote a pointless custom database report generator for the Federal
Emergency Management Agency. FEMA likes incomprehensible 3 or 4 letter
acronyms as names for their software. When management asked us for a name,
my co-worker came up with "FIDO" as a joke (something having to do with
fetching data). You guessed it - FEMA wanted to know the program's full
name. I decided FIDO stood for "FEMA's Inquisitor for Data Operations".
I don't know if FEMA thought "inquisitor" was some technical term, or if
they just didn't care, but FIDO is now listed in the FEMA Security Office's
official acronym dictionary. Nyahh ha ha ha.
Scott TCB Turner
particular.
-- Scott Turner
Terry Gaetz (Astronomy, U. Western Ontario)
> In article <35...@syma.sussex.ac.uk> ji...@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Jim Skea)
> writes:
> | Anyone out there know of similar progressions (apart from the B->C->C++)?
>
> The other standard progression is in parser generators:
> yacc -> bison -> ox
> (I think there was one more, but I can't remember it).
> --
'Occs' and 'LLama'...
--
Terry Gaetz -- ga...@uwovax.uwo.ca -- ga...@uwovax.BITNET
Peter Deutsch
> From article <23...@opus.cs.mcgill.ca>, by pet...@opus.cs.mcgill.ca (Peter Deutsch):
> > In article <33...@mindlink.UUCP>, a...@mindlink.UUCP (Greg Goss) writes:
> >> Perhaps it's considered too obvious to a bunch of Unix hacks, but the recursive
> >> name of GNU is interesting. Some of us are fascinated by recursion.
> >>
> >> GNU stands for Gnu is Not Unix, where GNU stands for ...
> > ..., but what is the _deepest_ non-recursive acronym? Anyone know one
> > better than two?
[ three level winner deleted ]
> Really Peter, you ought to have checked with our fine systems staff before
> posting such a silly question!
>
> - Bill
But, Bill, I tried! You guys are never around when I need
you! :-)
- peterd (Bill's boss)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
+-------+ Peter Deutsch McGill University
| u # u | pet...@cs.mcgill.ca School of Computer Science
|/\/\/\/|
| a a |
\ a / Go ahead, flame me. I have a /dev/null on my machine...
\___/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Deutsch
Well, that's why you have to read this newsgroup. We'll
set you straight. Actually, the rumour I heard (folklore?)
was that someone got a Ph.D. for essentially inventing
spooling. If true, it just goes to show, life _WAS_ easier
then. Now all the simple ideas are taken and we have to
think more!
Out of curiosity, does anyone know of any course being
offered in the history of computing? I have heard a
proposal for such a course as an elective, to supplement a
conventional Comp.Sci. program and was wondering if such a
beast already exists anywhere. I personally think it would
be neat, for both instructor and students and would think
that it would be more useful to Comp.Sci. students than
"Chemistry In The Modern World" or "Planets, Stars And
Galaxies" (both real elective courses here at McGill. I
took neither, but they appear to be two popular choices
when people need to squeeze in another couple of easy
credits in a crowded semester).
I have seen much material for such a course. There's
journals, a number of history papers, etc. I think it
would take some work to set up, but you could cover the
geneology of the most significant advances (Paging,
Swapping, Virtual Memory, Disk technology, core memory
through DRAM, the use of pools of mercury for memory (!YES!,
it works!) There is certainly no shortage of material,
although O think preparing it the first time would be a
big job of research. Evaluating it would be a challenge if
you were to avoid just blanket memorization.
Anyways, it wouldn't have to be just a blow-off, you could
show the advance of technology and help put things in
perspective. After all, those of us who forget history are
doomed to repeat it, and we seem to do it regularly.
Thoughts? Comments?
enquiring minds want to know...
- peterd
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
+-------+ Peter Deutsch McGill University
| u # u | pet...@cs.mcgill.ca School of Computer Science
|/\/\/\/|
| a a |
\ a / "Love my work, hate my job..."
\___/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Deutsch
> | Anyobe out there know of similar progressions (apart from the B->C->C++)?
Actually, shouldn't that be "B->C->C++->Objective-C" ?
(from a proud and early NeXT owner.)
> The other standard progression is in parser generators:
>
> yacc -> bison -> ox
>
> (I think there was one more, but I can't remember it).
Well, I would presume that there were at least two before.
Since "yacc" is "Yet Another Compiler Compiler", you'd
think there was at one point "Another Compiler Compiler"
and some form of "Compiler Compiler". as for "ox", is that
for real? I hadn't heard that one.
- peterd
^X ^I .signature
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
+-------+ Peter Deutsch McGill University
| u # u | pet...@cs.mcgill.ca School of Computer Science
|/\/\/\/|
| a a | "From MAILER...@hq.demos.su Thu Sep 13 00:45:55 MSD 1990"
\ a /
\___/ The day we made contact....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Look! I can type after the signature!
Michael Meissner
| Well, I would presume that there were at least two before.
| Since "yacc" is "Yet Another Compiler Compiler", you'd
| think there was at one point "Another Compiler Compiler"
| and some form of "Compiler Compiler". as for "ox", is that
| for real? I hadn't heard that one.
There was a precusor to yacc called TMG on version 6. From the
documentation it looked like it was less friendly to use than yacc (I
vaguely remember it built operator precedence tables, and not LL,
LALR, or LR tables). This is all from trying to understand the sparse
documentation ~12 years ago.
Alan J Rosenthal
>Since "yacc" is "Yet Another Compiler Compiler", you'd think there was at one
>point "Another Compiler Compiler" and some form of "Compiler Compiler".
Well, the name derives from the popularity of writing compiler compilers at the
time (now called parser generators, which they should have been called in the
first place (ob folklore: I remember that people used to lament that they
should really be called parser generators but alas the name compiler compiler
was with us forever, they sure were wrong!)). It's kind of like how editors
were several years ago, or mailers are now -- everyone (i.e. at least four
people) wrote one.
There was no "another compiler compiler". If you saw something billed as
"yet another X windows drawing program", you wouldn't suppose that there was
something called "another X windows drawing program".
ajr
--
"Anytime there are electronic systems there are usually complications of
electronic failure," he said.
Klaus Ole Kristiansen
>Noone has yet mentioned the computer algebra system for General Relativity
>(talk about esoteric?) called SHEEP: it's not an acronym, but it was a
>devlopment of the earlier program, Lisp Algebraic Manipulator, called
>(you guessed it) LAM.
>Ho ho.
>Anyone out there know of similar progressions (apart from the B->C->C++)?
Isn`t there a YACC-like program named BISON?
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879
ji...@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Jim Skea) writes:
>
> Anyone out there know of similar progressions (apart from the B->C->C++)?
The complete progression is:
CPL (Computer Programming Language) -- designed by Christopher Strachey
at Cambridge, the same man who later gave us a good chunk of
denotational semantics.
BCPL (Basic Computer Programming Language) -- who did this one? I
think it was also done at Cambridge, in reaction to difficulties
getting CPL implemented.
B -- a version of BCPL, done at Bell Labs, I think.
C -- the successor to B, done at Bell Labs as we all know.
C++ -- etc.
Doug Jones
jo...@herky.cs.uiowa.edu
Per Lindberg
>
>How about FRED, the "emacs-style" editor used in Allegro Common Lisp on
>the Mac?
>
>FRED Resembles Emacs Deliberately.....
And then we have the classic MINCE, for Mince Is Not Complete Emacs.
The Editor Of Choice on CP/M systems.
And, of course, The editor on LMI Lisp Machines, ZWEI: Zwei Was Eine,
Initially. (Where EINE (probably an earlier version) stands for Eine
Is Not Emacs).
Recursive acronyms are lots of fun! If I ever write an editor, I'm
going to call it TINTNOTE, for This Is Not The Name Of This Editor.
--
Per Lindberg (The Mad Programmer) ! __!__
Front Capital Systems, Box 5727, ! _____(_)_____ Ceci n'est pas une Piper
11487 Stockholm, Sweden. 8-6611510 ! ! ! !
Drifter...
Well there is a news reading program we have here that doesn't work very
well. It's fortran converted from Unix, and tends to crash a lot (usually
because of integers that are too small, or field conversion problems). There's
not much need for it, though, because of the VMS news reader we have. Still,
the converted one has a few useful features so it is kept around.
And what do we call the program? Why, BADNEWS of course....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CARL%NUCENG...@PINE.CIRCA.UFL.EDU - "Here, have a scooby snack."
"That reminds me of the year I had a room next to Deidra's. Don't worry, all
I heard was your electric shaver. At least I *hope* it was her electric
shaver." --Doctor, Doctor
*DISCLAIMER* - Contents is not connected with UF or NucEng department.
Robert Scott French
>And, of course, The editor on LMI Lisp Machines, ZWEI: Zwei Was Eine,
>Initially. (Where EINE (probably an earlier version) stands for Eine
>Is Not Emacs).
This is also a double-pun: eine means "one" in German, and "zwei"
means "two".
Rob
BQT
>Perhaps it's considered too obvious to a bunch of Unix hacks, but the recursive
>name of GNU is interesting. Some of us are fascinated by recursion.
>
>GNU stands for Gnu is Not Unix, where GNU stands for ...
Well, this is older than UNIX (I suspect).
You had two editors, long lost in the mist of time by now.
(I've never seen them).
They were reputedadly called:
EINS (Which meant Eins Is Not ???? (Don't remember what S stood for,
SOS manybe)).
then came
ZWEI (Zwei Was Eins Initially)
There are surely more of these...
======================================================================
Everybody know that the DECstation - I'm on a bus
is a pdp8, which is a RISC, but - on a psychodelic trip,
where did MIPS computers get into it? - reading murder books
- and tryin' to stay hip.
- Johnny Billquist - Billy Idol
D89.JOHNNY...@AIDA.CSD.UU.SE
D89.JOHNNY...@CARMEN.DOCS.UU.SE
======================================================================
Peter Scott
> In article <35...@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
> ji...@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Jim Skea) writes:
> >
> > Anyone out there know of similar progressions (apart from the B->C->C++)?
>
> The complete progression is:
>
> CPL (Computer Programming Language) -- designed by Christopher Strachey
> at Cambridge, the same man who later gave us a good chunk of
> denotational semantics.
>
> BCPL (Basic Computer Programming Language) -- who did this one? I
> think it was also done at Cambridge, in reaction to difficulties
> getting CPL implemented.
Martin Richards (my supervisor at Cambridge). We were told that the
letters stood for Basic Cambridge Programming Language.
--
This is news. This is your | Peter Scott, NASA/JPL/Caltech
brain on news. Any questions? | (p...@aristotle.jpl.nasa.gov)
Huw Davies - La Trobe University Computer Centre
> ji...@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Jim Skea) writes:
>>
>> Anyone out there know of similar progressions (apart from the B->C->C++)?
>
> The complete progression is:
>
> think it was also done at Cambridge, in reaction to difficulties
> getting CPL implemented.
>
by Martin Richards and Colin Whitby-Strevens - Cambridge University Press:
"BCPL was designed by on of the authors in 1967 (Richards)."
From the first chapter:
"The language BCPL (Basic CPL) was originally developed as a compiler-
writing tool and, as its name suggests, is closely related to CPL (Combined
Programming Language) which was jointly developed at Cambridge and London
Universities. CPL is described in Barron et al. [1]"
[1] Barron et al. The main features of CPL. Computer Journal vol. 6 p. 134(1963)
Lars Poulsen
>The original ASP (the forerunner of JES3) stood for Automated Spooling
>Program. When HASP came along, it really stood for Half-ASP.
I thought I remembered that ASP stood for Attached Support Processor.
Originally, ASP ran on a dedicated machine (usually a 360/30 or 360/40),
wheras HASP could run on the main processor itself. When this feature
was added to ASP, it became LASP for LOCAL ASP.
ASP was able to support the IBSYS/IBJOB complex as well as OS/360.
(I.e. the 7094 and friends).
--
/ Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer
CMC Rockwell la...@CMC.COM
Jeremy J. Epstein
> Noone has yet mentioned the computer algebra system for General Relativity
> (talk about esoteric?) called SHEEP: it's not an acronym, but it was a
> devlopment of the earlier program, Lisp Algebraic Manipulator, called
> (you guessed it) LAM.
>
> Ho ho.
>
> Anyone out there know of similar progressions (apart from the B->C->C++)?
I've been told that there was an HP plotter code named "Descartes" after
the Greek geometer. The followon product was "Dehorse", so you could
say "descartes came before dehorse".
This is merely heresay...I heard it from an HP employee, but he may have
made it up!!!
--
Jeremy Epstein
TRW Systems Division
703-876-8776
jje%vir...@uunet.uu.net
Jeremy J. Epstein
>
> Out of curiosity, does anyone know of any course being
>
> Thoughts? Comments?
I think we could develop a lot of the course on line in this newsgroup.
Incidentally, the "Annals of the History of Computing" had some good
articles while it lasted. My favorite was the timeline of computing,
which showed the death of COBOL and the ascendancy of Ada predicted
every two years, like clockwork.
--Jeremy
Arthur Evans
>The complete progression is:
>
> CPL (Computer Programming Language) -- designed by Christopher Strachey
> at Cambridge, the same man who later gave us a good chunk of
> denotational semantics.
>
> BCPL (Basic Computer Programming Language) -- who did this one? I
> think it was also done at Cambridge, in reaction to difficulties
> getting CPL implemented.
>
> B -- a version of BCPL, done at Bell Labs, I think.
>
> C -- the successor to B, done at Bell Labs as we all know.
Close. CPL originally stood for Cambridge Programming Language. Later,
when Christopher went to Oxford, it stood for Combined Programming
Language. Still later, when documentation that had been promised was
not forthcoming, many said it stood for Christopher's Private Language.
Martin Richards, who had just completed his doctoral work with Strachey,
came to MIT Project MAC in about 1967 to implement CPL on as many
machines as he could. He made the sensible decision to bootstrap by
implementing a bootstrap subset of CPL, or BCPL. BCPL is syntactically
similar to CPL but has no notion of data type.
As it turned out, BCPL was a major accomplishment in itself, and Martin
never did get around to doing any CPL compilers. For many years,
programs written in BCPL were more likely to be movable to a wide
variety of computers than those written in any other language. (Fortran
and COBOL might be exceptions.)
Folks at Bell Labs were then working with MIT on Multics and learned
about BCPL. When they decided to leave the Multics project, leading
later to the dearly beloved Unix, they decided that BCPL was too rich
and implemented B, documented only in Bell Labs internal memoranda.
They later replaced B by C.
A still unanswered question: Will C's successor be P or D?
Art Evans
Arthur Evans
>There was a precusor to yacc called TMG on version 6. From the
>documentation it looked like it was less friendly to use than yacc (I
>vaguely remember it built operator precedence tables, and not LL,
>LALR, or LR tables).
TMG was TransMorGrifier (a pretty nice acronym by itself), which
transmorgrified source code into parsed form. Of course it didn't use
LL ro LR or LALR techniques, since it predates those technologies.
When Bell Labs was still part of the Multics project, in about 1968 or
so, some folks at Murray Hill, including Bob Morris and Doug McIlroy and
(I think) Brian Kernighan, were implementing PL-I using TMG to express
the parsing algorithms. I had the misfortune to have to look at some of
that code. Fortunately, I have managed over the years to forget
everything about the notation except a feeling of awe at how it was
possible for folks to create something that worked from such an ugly
notation.
Art Evans/Software Engineering Institute
Thomas M Link
>When Bell Labs was still part of the Multics project, in about 1968 or
>so, some folks at Murray Hill, including Bob Morris and Doug McIlroy and
Which reminds me that 'Unix' is a pun for castrated Multics
and then there's always
'Mt Xinu' which is just a reversal of the letters in 'Unix (tm)'
Tom Link
310 Surrey Place, Pittsburgh, PA 15235-5056, USA 1+(412)731-6296
li...@psc.edu (li...@128.182.66.100) | Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
t...@unix.cis.pitt.edu | University of Pittsburgh
TL...@andrew.cmu.edu | Carnegie Mellon University
BITNET: link@cpwpsca __ _ ___ _ _ _
CC-NET: cpwsca::link (35.6::link) (__ |-| /-\ _|_ |\| (_)-(_)-(_)-
Matthew Farwell
>Isn`t there a YACC-like program named BISON?
I'm surprised no-one had yet mentioned the GNU shell called BASH, which
stands for Bourne-Again SHell...
Dylan.
--
Matthew J Farwell | Email: dy...@ibmpcug.co.uk
The IBM PC User Group, PO Box 360,| ...!uunet!ukc!ibmpcug!dylan
Harrow HA1 4LQ England | CONNECT - Usenet Access in the UK!!
Phone: +44 81-863-1191 | Sun? Don't they make coffee machines?
David Harrington
>In article <33...@mindlink.UUCP>, a80@mindlink (Greg Goss) writes:
>>Perhaps it's considered too obvious to a bunch of Unix hacks, but the recursive
>>name of GNU is interesting. Some of us are fascinated by recursion.
>>
>>GNU stands for Gnu is Not Unix, where GNU stands for ...
>
>Well, this is older than UNIX (I suspect).
>
>You had two editors, long lost in the mist of time by now.
>(I've never seen them).
>They were reputedadly called:
>
>EINS (Which meant Eins Is Not ???? (Don't remember what S stood for,
> SOS manybe)).
>then came
>ZWEI (Zwei Was Eins Initially)
>
>There are surely more of these...
>
"Operating Systems Design: The XINU Approach." According to Peter Denning, in
the Foreward, XINU stands for Xinu Is Not Unix.
I guess the list of Things That Are Not Unix (TTANU) is pretty long... :-)
--
David Harrington internet: d...@eire.unify.COM
Unify Corporation ...!{csusac,pyramid}!unify!eire!dgh
3870 Rosin Court voice: (916) 920-9092
Sacramento, CA 95834 fax: (916) 921-5340
Paul Shields
On a Honeywell DPS-6 , a few of you might run WGCOS, which
stands for
world's greatest cassette operating system.
random uid
In article <1990Sep30.2...@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov> p...@aristotle.jpl.nasa.gov writes:
>In article <24...@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>, jo...@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
>> CPL (Computer Programming Language) -- designed by Christopher Strachey
>> BCPL (Basic Computer Programming Language) -- who did this one? I
>Martin Richards (my supervisor at Cambridge). We were told that the
>letters stood for Basic Cambridge Programming Language.
That's what all Cambridge people were told. CPL was a joint project
with one of the London colleges (whose name escapes me for the moment).
The official meaning of CPL was Combined Programming Language. The
meaning of the `C' changed when the fens were reached.
One of the reasons that no-one used CPL was that it proved uncompilable
with the technology of the day. BCPL was much easier, and it earned
Martin Richards his PhD.
Graeme Thomas The Santa Cruz Operation Limited
gra...@sco.com +44 923 816344
--
Graeme Thomas Santa Cruz Operation London
saul rosen
>offered in the history of computing?
I am now teaching a course in the history of computing in the Computer
Science department at Purdue University. Such courses have been
offered at a number of universities, though not a very large number.
The best known is the course by M. R. Williams that is described in
his paper "A Course in the History of Computation" in the Annals of
the History of Computing, Vol.7, No.3, July 1985. He has written a
book "A History of Computing Technology" for that course.
I use that as one of the texts for my course, but the course that I
give is quite different fom his, e.g. I emphasize some more
recent history, and some history of software.
Incidentally, The Annals of the History of Computing has issued a call
for papers for a special issue on "The History of Computing in
Education" to be published sometime in 1992.
Saul Rosen
James Connor
[.....stuff deleted...]
|Out of curiosity, does anyone know of any course being
|offered in the history of computing?
Indeed there is such a course offered by the Computer Science Dept. at Calgary
University....it's a half year course, and as far as I recall, it concentrates
on modern developements....the Calgary calendar could probably tell you more..
|.......proposal for such a course as an elective, to supplement a
|conventional Comp.Sci. program and was wondering if such a
|beast already exists anywhere. I personally think it would
|be neat, for both instructor and students and would think
|that it would be more useful to Comp.Sci. students than
|"Chemistry In The Modern World" or "Planets, Stars And
|Galaxies" (both real elective courses here at McGill. I
|took neither, but they appear to be two popular choices
|when people need to squeeze in another couple of easy
|credits in a crowded semester).
...too right
|Anyways, it wouldn't have to be just a blow-off, you could
|show the advance of technology and help put things in
|perspective. After all, those of us who forget history are
|doomed to repeat it, and we seem to do it regularly.
|Thoughts? Comments?
|enquiring minds want to know...
It sounds like a marvelous idea to me...I would readily take such a course,
and I'm not even a computer scientist...maybe I could persuade somebody to
start a course like that here at York...just thinking out loud....
| - peterd
Michael Stimac
>#
>#One I've already mentioned was HASP - "Houston Automated
>#Spooling Program", where SPOOL is "Simultaneous Peripheral
>#Operations On Line" or some such.
>
>The original ASP (the forerunner of JES3) stood for Automated Spooling
>up the name with the Houston acronym when it became it decided to make it
>available to customers.
>
>At least, that's the story I heard.
>
>Al Shing
NO! NO! NO!. HASP has been reported correctly in this group.
ASP came later than HASP. ASP stands for Attach(ed) Support
Processor.
I was a sysprog at Princeton University when ASP was
installed for our 360/91 and 306/65(67) system. ASP was
used to provide a programmed (as opposed to human) control
over job scheduling and priority. ASP gained control of
the OS by exploiting a seldom-used hook in the file open
routines.
The story Al Shing "heard" is apparently an attempt at
a joke.
Michael Stimac
(Hello John Benoit wherever you are)
Elliott S. Frank
>
>ASP came later than HASP. ASP stands for Attach(ed) Support
>Processor.
>
>I was a sysprog at Princeton University when ASP was
>installed for our 360/91 and 306/65(67) system. ASP was
>used to provide a programmed (as opposed to human) control
>over job scheduling and priority. ASP gained control of
>the OS by exploiting a seldom-used hook in the file open
>routines.
Close. I was a sysprog at Princeton when HASP was installed on the
360/67 (1965/6). ASP was what we were waiting for. It was to be for the
360 what DCS was for the 709x: a slave processor handling all of the unit
record (old-timers term for printer, card punch, and card reader)
tasks. It was going to be better, much better. It was, also, late.
The Houston Automated Spooling Program was written by a couple of SE's
at the Manned Flight Center in Houston to save the account (it worked,
they did) when ASP was delayed and one of their competitors could
demonstrate a working spooler supporting an equivalent speed machine.
[BTW, OS/360, which at that time could go 20+ hrs on a 1 MIP
machine before requiring a re-IPL, put men on the moon. Scared the
daylights out of me when I found that out!] HASP was distributed as a
source tape (no support, and you had to use a special utility to update
the source since the sequence numbers were screwy) at Share (IBM large
systems user group). I was slaving away at an 029 (writing the original
Princeton User's Guide) when John Benoit came in and screwed a hasp over
the job submission window, before disappearing into the machine room with
a tape cannister under his arm. It took a while before I got the pun.
--
Elliott Frank ...!{uunet,sun}!amdahl!esf00 (408) 746-6384
or ....!es...@amdahl.com
[the above opinions are strictly mine, if anyone's.]
[the above signature may or may not be repeated, depending upon some
inscrutable property of the mailer-of-the-week.]
Peter Deutsch
> Doug Jones (jo...@herky.cs.uiowa.edu) says:
> >The complete progression is:
[* prehistory of C deleted *]
> > C -- the successor to B, done at Bell Labs as we all know.
[* more BCPL history deleted *]
> A still unanswered question: Will C's successor be P or D?
Actually, the answer is in on this one. It's obvious, the
successor to C is "C++".
BTW, I saw this one a while ago "What's the successor to
Cobol?"
Answer "Add_one_to_Cobol"
And if that makes you groan, imagine how I felt when I saw
the flyer for the book "Object-Oriented Cobol". Yup, it's
out there.....
- peterd
^X ^I .signature
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+-------+ Peter Deutsch McGill University
| u # u | pet...@cs.mcgill.ca School of Computer Science
|/\/\/\/|
| a a | "Well she turned me into a newt!"
\ a / "A newt?"
\___/ "I got better."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Shields
> with a joke in the name or otherwise suitably obscure?
When working on the Native Computer Network, I hacked together a
menu-oriented program for the users, who didn't know anything about
computers and couldn't handle Unix commands. I called it "mush",
connotative of my thought processes in writing it, and meaning MenU
SHell. Not very creative, and not original as I noticed, soon after,
that Usenet knew of another "mush": Mail User SHell -- far too
similar. I had to rename my program.
So, with some influence from HAL (w.r.t IBM, eh?) it is now called
"lush". After posting it to Usenet without explaining the origin of
the name, (to let everyone else invent an acronym for it :-) my
supervisor asked me to explain why I chose "lush".
I had to think fast -- I said, "Layman User's SHell". And it stuck.
Paul Shields, shi...@nccn.yorku.ca
... Say, anyone out there have any creative passwords?
(don't tell us your current one, of course. :-)
FTLOMICTOO - for the life of me, I can't think of one.
Joe Morris
>The Houston Automated Spooling Program was written by a couple of SE's
>at the Manned Flight Center in Houston to save the account
Including Tom Simpson, who later went to Amdahl
> HASP was distributed as a
>source tape (no support, and you had to use a special utility to update
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
IEBUPDAT, which was the only update utility included with the early
versions of OS/360. IEBUPDTE replaced it later. The syntax for
IEBUPDAT makes RPG look like a high-level language.
>the source since the sequence numbers were screwy) at Share (IBM large
>systems user group).
Nope, it was distributed by IBM as a "Type 3" program, order number
05.1.014 from PID (IBM's program distribution facility). There were
numerous *modification* tapes distributed by SHARE for HASP, successors
or which are still around as the JES2 mods tapes.
>Princeton User's Guide) when John Benoit came in and screwed a hasp over
>the job submission window, before disappearing into the machine room with
>a tape cannister under his arm. It took a while before I got the pun.
The logo for the JES2 project is still a hasp, and there are still numerous
related jokes, puns, and songs. "Haspy Days Are Here Again" is the
original HASP song.
Joe Morris
Saul Rosen
>Incidentally, the "Annals of the History of Computing" had some good
>articles while it lasted. My favorite was the timeline of computing,
>which showed the death of COBOL and the ascendancy of Ada predicted
>every two years, like clockwork.
These four lines are full of misinformation. The "Annals of the History
of Computing" is a quarterly journal that has been published since 1979.
My previous posting mentioned a call for papers for an issue on the
History of Computing in Education to be published in 1992. The Annals is
still very much alive, and readers of this newsgroup should subscribe.
The prediction concerning Cobol and ADA is pure fantasy on the part of
Mr.Epstein. Nothing like that ever appeared in the Annals!
Saul Rosen
~v
Roeber, Frederick
>...
Things That Are Not Unix are also UN-ATT..
(remember: Unix (tm) <--> Mt. Xinu)
| Frederick G. M. Roeber | e-mail: roe...@caltech.edu or roe...@vxcern.cern.ch |
| r-mail: CERN/SL-CO, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland | telephone: +41 22 767 5373 |
| "Believe in me, I'm with the High Command." |
Jakob Nielsen
>articles while it lasted. My favorite was the timeline of computing,
>which showed the death of COBOL and the ascendancy of Ada predicted
issues of the Communications of the ACM and not in the Annals of the
History of Computing.
--
Jakob Nielsen, Bellcore, 445 South St. MRE-2P370, Morristown, NJ 07962-1910, USA
nie...@bellcore.com, Tel: (201) 829-4731(w)/538-7254(h), Fax (201) 538-9093.
Peter Neilson
Waiting in the wings (hadn't you heard?):
Object-Ornated DIBOL
--------------------
Disoriented-Subject Intercal
----------------------------
Prepositional PEESPOL
---------------------
Steve Simmons
>And if that makes you groan, imagine how I felt when I saw
>the flyer for the book "Object-Oriented Cobol". Yup, it's
>out there.....
Fortunately it's pronounced 'ook'. As in 'ook-ook' by a chimp.
Ken Leonard
*
* How about FRED, the "emacs-style" editor used in Allegro Common Lisp on
* the Mac?
*
* FRED Resembles Emacs Deliberately.....
*
But, uhhh.... why would anyone want to do that?
Ken Leonard
* <<<
* < One I've already mentioned was HASP - "Houston Automated
* < Spooling Program", where SPOOL is "Simultaneous Peripheral
* < Operatopns On Line" or some such.
* ----------
* I thought Spool refered to the early mainframe practice of
* dumping output onto a Spool of tape that some peon carried
* over and fed to the output device. You were able to keep the
* big box humming without slowing it down for I/O.
The term SPOOL originated when the attached I/O processor or smart
channel processor made physical relocation of the tape unnecessary--
which is, exactly as the man said, Simultaneous Peripheral Operations OnLine.
Ken Leonard
* Program. When HASP came along, it really stood for Half-ASP. IBM cleaned
* up the name with the Houston acronym when it became it decided to make it
* available to customers.
Well, as a one-time system developer for IBM...
-
ASP was Attached Support Processor--having a smaller CPU of (usually) different
type channel-attached to the cruncher CPU, to offload SPOOLing. ASP and HASP
were release at about the same time, and HASP really was developed in Houston,
and the names were not really initially related. But...
The early releases of HASP were _unusually_ buggy, and were even harder
to use than the often-hated ASP, so HASP _was_ often referred to
as Half-ASPed.
David Elworthy
> [...] Paul Shields, shi...@nccn.yorku.ca
>
>... Say, anyone out there have any creative passwords?
>(don't tell us your current one, of course. :-)
>
> FTLOMICTOO - for the life of me, I can't think of one.
I liked "Superman" for a system account password: it means "Supervisor and
Manager". One which I used once was "laeliu" which comes from the artifical
language Loglan. "liu" quotes the object that follows and "lae" dereferences
its argument. So "laeliu" takes the whole session that follows and yields its
meaning.
-- david elworthy
HIS...@lure.latrobe.edu.au
> Out of curiosity, does anyone know of any course being
> offered in the history of computing? I have heard a
> proposal for such a course as an elective, to supplement a
> conventional Comp.Sci. program and was wondering if such a
> beast already exists anywhere.
> After all, those of us who forget history are
> doomed to repeat it, and we seem to do it often.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am currently teaching a first-year subject in the history of the computer at
La Trobe University in Melbourne (for the second year now). I became so
frustrated with the lack of any coherent description and/or analysis of the
antecedent conditions, context, discourse, technological developments and
growth of the computer industry, that I have written a textbook for it myself.
I hope to have a completed manuscript by Christmas and have a couple of
publishers who are willing to at least read the manuscript.
It has two parts, for the two semesters of the course. Part I covers the six
revolutions which have shaped the modern world (Printing, Scientific,
Democratic, Industrial, Business and Russian) in the attempt to establish
criteria for making a judgment on whether a Computer Revolution has occurred.
It also provides the context within which to discuss early efforts to mechanise
calculation so that it was faster and more accurate than humans.
Part II argues that there has been a Computer Revolution, that it occurred
between 1937 and 1967, and that it had five phases (referred to in the
literature as "generations"). I deal with the discourse that resulted in the
von Neumann architecture, Military-Industrial Complex, Democratic Capitalism,
technological advances of a large number of individual machines, the growth of
high level languages and "software", Artificial Intelligence, and finally with
the growth of the computer industry in America, England, Europe and Japan.
The notes and bibliography are fairly extensive because I am trying primarily to
act as a mediator between specialist knowledge and non-experts. Anyone
interested in reading a rough draft (which should be finished by late
October/early November) and making suggestions/comments should drop me a note
directly.
Don Ferrell
Department of History
La Trobe University
Bundoora, Victoria 3083 Australia
FAX: 61 3 478 5814
EMAIL: HIS...@LURE.LATROBE.EDU.AU
Tim McGuire
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Stan Augarten's _BIT by BIT_
(published by Ticknor & Fields.) Although it's a little dated now
(copyright 1984,) it is still very informative.
It might be suitable for use as a textbook for a computer history course
if some additional supplements were used also. (i.e., the emphasis is on
hardware, not software.)
Comments appreciated on this idea, posted or via e-Mail.
Tim McGuire
mcg...@cs.tamu.edu
The Polymath
The authors claim the GW in GWBASIC stands for "Gee Wiz", in reference to
all the features they built into it.
--
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, M.A., CDP, aka: holl...@ttidca.tti.com)
Head Robot Wrangler at Citicorp(+)TTI Illegitimis non
3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 450-9111, x2483 Carborundum
Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun | philabs | psivax}!ttidca!hollombe
Jeff Jonas
The linker was renamed Groucho, Chico, Harpo, etc... until it
got too large for mere mortals and was renamed "GOD".
You communicated with GOD with GOD control cards.
Euligio Dhananjaya Garcia of Zilog Office Systems wrote his
own editor "SOUL: Software Organizing Universal Librarian".
The Zilog system 8000 diagnostics are SADIE:
something like System and Diagnostic Interactive Executive.
Jeffrey Jonas
je...@synsys.uucp
Jeff Jonas
Robin Fairbairns
>I've been told that there was an HP plotter code named "Descartes" after
>the Greek geometer.
Greek!!! Adds a whole new rash of meanings to Cartesian philosophy.
>This is merely heresay...I heard it from an HP employee, but he may have
>made it up!!!
He sure as hell made up the nationality.
Richard Wexelblat
>In article <1990Oct01.1...@virtech.uucp> j...@virtech.uucp (Jeremy J. Epstein) writes:
>He never was Greek.
Actually I think he did belong to a Frat for a year while he was an
undergrad at Brown.
--
--Dick Wexelblat (r...@ida.org) 703 845 6601
Can you accept an out of state sanity check?