[SCC_Active_Members] APL

[Dennis Allison]

The John Walters tape is the EE380 archives at Stanford, boxed and stored
for lack of space---and there are 30+ years of them.  M$ was going to
support putting them into digital form for the web, but so far, no money.  
I'll see what I can do, however.

I remember John telling me, after he left HP, that he was working with 
some folks to build a portable APL with JIT features similar to the HP 
implementation but much more general in structure and concept.  I don't 
remember who he was working with at the time nor what happened to it.  
This was late enough that APL was no longer the new kid on the block and 
its popularity was beginning to wane.

I have had no contact with Jim Ryan for 30+ years.  

The LLL implementation for the Star was rather cool since it did static 
scoping and generated machine code.  I don't remember the implementors 
names at the moment (give me a few days...) but George Michaels is 
probably a good resource.

The APL interactive interface, the thing many of use associate with APL,  
was done by Larry Breed.  I've lost track of him.

There was a DEC PDP-10 implemenation with an ascii interface that we used 
in the languages class at Stanford.  It was, well, very cumbersome.  I 
don't remember who did it. 

The Finnish APL interest group did a very cool book with hundreds of one
liners.  I have a copy somewhere and will see that it gets to the history
museum.



On Thu, 29 Sep 2005, Lee Courtney wrote:

> 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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> > > SCC_active at computerhistory.org
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> > >
> >
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