Many years ago I was crying in my beer at GUIDE about the sorry state of ASMH and John said "I think IBM management would go along if you can demonstrate some interest" The GUIDE "Assembler Indignation" project was born. Nobody believed that there was interest in a new assembler except the two of us. The thing I most remember about that time was saying "Hold on while I get us a bigger room" 350 people showed up for the announcement of the High Level Assembler. The High Level Assembler saved the company I worked for a lot of time and improved code quality. Later when the binder was new John helped explain my assembler programs demonstrating binder bugs to the folks that only spoke PL/S. SPASM <http://www.jaymoseley.com/hercules/downloads/pdf/spasmug.pdf> was another of John's assemblers, before he worked for IBM. In all his helpfulness and good humor will be missed.
John Melcher, Jr. -- This message (and reply) was read by Google and the NSA.
