Apollo/Clever?

[ucbvax!works]

>From Lars.Ericson@Cmu-10a Sun Mar 7 23:53:10 1982
Apollo system software is programmed in FORTRAN. I guess this is an
example of clever, conservative system design allowing future upgrading --
like maybe to a recoding in PASCAL. Then, 10 years from now, maybe
we'll see an Apollo upgrade programmed in LISP....

[ucbvax!works]

>From Mishkin@Yale Mon Mar 8 16:06:34 1982
Mail-from: ARPANET site BRL rcvd on Mon Mar 8 17:21:04
Date: 8 March 1982 0026-EST (Monday)
From: Lars.Ericson at Cmu-10a
To: WorkS at Mit-Ai
Subject: Apollo/Clever?
Message-Id: <08Mar82 002626 LE60@CMU-10A>
Via: Mit-Ai; 8 Mar 82 2:20-EDT
Via: Brl-Bmd; 8 Mar 82 2:31-EDT

Apollo system software is programmed in FORTRAN. I guess this is an
example of clever, conservative system design allowing future upgrading --
like maybe to a recoding in PASCAL. Then, 10 years from now, maybe
we'll see an Apollo upgrade programmed in LISP....

This is a misrepresentation of the facts.

(1) Some fraction (~.50) of the user tools are in Ratfor. These
came from the so-called "Software Tools" tape.

(2) The other tools are written in Pascal. I'm no Pascal fan,
I can assure you, but they're not bad.

(3) The kernel is written in very cleanly coded Pascal.

How many other commercially produced software systems are programmed
in Pascal, let alone Lisp? A project to bring up Lisp/Scheme on the
Apollo is well underway here at Yale. We expect to start doing our
systems programming in it within the next few months (not 10 years).
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