Speedcoding

Speedcoding or Speedcode was the first high-level programming language created for an IBM computer.[1] The language was developed by John Backus in 1953 for the IBM 701 to support computation with floating point numbers.[2] Here high level means symbolic and aiming for natural language expressivity as a goal as opposed to machine or hardware instruction oriented coding.

Speedcoding
Paradigmstructured, object-oriented, generic
Designed byJohn Backus
DeveloperJohn Backus and IBM
First appeared1953 (1953)
Typing disciplinestrong, static, manifest
Influenced by
Assembly language, machine code
Influenced
Fortran, ALGOL 58, BASIC, C, PL/I, PACT I, MUMPS, Ratfor

The idea arose from the difficulty of programming the IBM SSEC machine when Backus was hired to calculate astronomical positions in early 1950.[3] The speedcoding system was an interpreter and focused on ease of use at the expense of system resources. It provided pseudo-instructions for common mathematical functions: logarithms, exponentiation, and trigonometric operations. The resident software analyzed pseudo-instructions one by one and called the appropriate subroutine. Speedcoding was also the first implementation of decimal input/output operations. Although it substantially reduced the effort of writing many jobs, the running time of a program that was written with the help of Speedcoding was usually ten to twenty times that of machine code.[4] The interpreter took 310 memory words, about 30% of the memory available on a 701.[1]

See also

References
  1. F. E. Allen (September 1981). "The History of Language Processor Technology in IBM". IBM Journal of Research and Development. 25 (5): 535–548. doi:10.1147/rd.255.0535.
  2. Shasha, Dennis; Cathy Lazere (1998). Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists. New York: Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. ISBN 0-387-98269-8.
  3. Interviewed by Grady Booch (September 5, 2006). "Oral History of John Backus" (PDF). Reference number: X3715.2007. Computer History Museum. Retrieved April 23, 2011.
  4. Emerson W. Pugh, Lyle R. Johnson, John H. Palmer, IBM's 360 and early 370 systems, MIT Press, 1991, ISBN 0-262-16123-0, p. 38

Further reading


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