From: Eric S. Raymond Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 23:04:56 +0000 (+0000) Subject: Ties to the literature. X-Git-Tag: 1.0~72 X-Git-Url: http://thyrsus.com/gitweb/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=8c2b534da4c8fcdfe5b3674ef5507bcdf5606d2e;p=mad.git Ties to the literature. --- diff --git a/doc/mad-manual.xml b/doc/mad-manual.xml index 798b0b7..50efb05 100644 --- a/doc/mad-manual.xml +++ b/doc/mad-manual.xml @@ -35,11 +35,11 @@ reconstructive archeology, so that language connoisseurs of the present and future will be able to appreciate what computing life was like back in that day. -MAD was an extended dialect of ALGOL 58, designed near the -beginning of the great age of invention in compiled languages that -stretched from FORTRAN in 1955 until the rise to dominance of C after -1985. Study of it teaches a great deal about the uses and background -assumptions of computing in 1962 and earlier. +MAD was an extended dialect of ALGOL 58, first released in 1959 +near the beginning of the great age of invention in compiled languages +that stretched from FORTRAN in 1955 until the rise to dominance of C +after 1985. Study of it teaches a great deal about the uses and +background assumptions of computing in 1962 and earlier. Some features of MAD are only superficially odd. The all-caps listings look strange to modern eyes; the IBM 704 on which it was @@ -111,6 +111,20 @@ illustrates, MAD even supported what was later called higher-order programming — passing around function-valued variables! +Also, MAD took care of details of running a job in ways that few +other languages of the time could do. MAD was what came to be called a +"load-and-go" compiler; unlike other languages of the period in which +jobs had to be launched by the operator after the card deck had been +loaded, the MAD system would ship either a diagnostic listing or +program output to the line printer immediately after the deck +compiled. This fast turnaround was essential for a teaching +environment. MAD also featured good diagnostics to help students find +and correct errors. MAD's combination of a compiler with the simple +supervisor program that enabled load-and-go operation was considered +quite cutting-edge at the time and inspired a paper in the very first +issue of ACM Computing Surverys (Supervisory and Monitor +System, R.F. Rosin, March 1969). + On the other hand, there are some features of MAD which make one truly wonder what the designers were thinking — the handling of array indexing, for example, with two different addressing systems one