[SCC_Active_Members] APL

[Lee Courtney]

Dennis,

I've replied off-line to Bob regarding the work Christian Langreiter and I
are doing for APL in the context of the SCC. This is great stuff - more
pointers on non-IBM APL implementations! Interesting ones to boot. Couple
quick questions:

> we have the tape
> somewhere but I don't remember the actual date.

If this is easy to find that would be a great addition. Other than the HP
Journal article and another paper at the Museum, there is not a lot of info
on this system.

> Jim Ryan did a similar system for the Burrooughs 6500, actually a layered
> interpreter which used several different represenations and profiling to
> decide which one to use.  He described this in detail at a SIG meeting in
> Santa Cruz.

Would you have contact info for Jim? Or anyone else connected with APL on
Burroughs mainframes?

Thanks!

Lee Courtney

MontaVista Software
1237 East Arques Avenue
Sunnyvale, California 94085
(408) 328-9238	voice
(408) 328-9204	fax
Yahoo IM: charlesleecourtney

> -----Original Message-----
> From: scc_active-bounces at computerhistory.org
> [mailto:scc_active-bounces at computerhistory.org]On Behalf Of Dennis
> Allison
> Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 12:39 AM
> To: Bob Fraley
> Cc: SCC active
> Subject: Re: [SCC_Active_Members] APL
>
>
>
> John Walters was at IBM where he did the 360 Assemblers.  Last
> heard of he
> was a Professor in Sweden (Linköpings universitet) about half the year.
> He described the HP APL compiler in an EE380 talk -- we have the tape
> somewhere but I don't remember the actual date.
>
> Jim Ryan did a similar system for the Burrooughs 6500, actually a layered
> interpreter which used several different represenations and profiling to
> decide which one to use.  He described this in detail at a SIG meeting in
> Santa Cruz.
>
>
>
> On Wed, 28 Sep 2005, Bob Fraley wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I heard that there is some investigation into APL.  HP's APL
> was mentioned
> > in the discussion.  I've just made contact with Ken Van Bree,
> one of the
> > programmers, and Alan Marcum, who was an intern from MIT who
> did some work
> > on the project.  I don't know how to contact most of the people
> who were on
> > the project, but here are some of the names:
> >
> > Paul Stoft:  Headed HP Labs, and sponsored this project.
> >
> > John Walters:  Project manager (formerly of IBM?)
> >
> > Developers:
> > Ron Johnson
> > Grant Munsey
> > Eric Van Dyke
> > Ken Van Bree
> >
> > Rob Kelly:  Stanford student who was on the project
> > Alan Marcum:  MIT student intern on the project
> >
> > All of the above people were in the research labs.
> >
> > Jean Danver and Bob Crum:  helped take the project into production.
> >
> > For those who have not heard much about this project, this
> implementation
> > of the APL system was essentially a JIT system.  It compiled
> the APL code
> > to speed up execution.  Normally, APL is interpreted because
> there is no
> > data typing.  Each entry to a procedure may have parameters having
> > different types, and these types include multidimensional arrays.  Each
> > time the procedure is called, one of the existing compiled
> versions  will
> > be used if the types match.  Otherwise, a new version of the
> procedure will
> > be compiled with the new parameter signature.  (Smaller code
> elements could
> > also be compiled.)
> >
> > The notable piece of hardware was a version of the HP terminal
> that had an
> > APL keyboard and display.  There might have been some changes to the
> > processor to speed up certain operations; I'd have to inquire
> further to
> > find that out for sure.
> >
> > This is all explained in an HP Journal article.  I don't know if the HP
> > Library has archived these journals.
> >
> > If anyone would like contact information, I believe that we can get in
> > touch with 3 or 4 of these people.
> >
> > Bob
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
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>
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