Course if you dropped the APL ball,
<warning: another old timer talking history; uninterested youngsters can
skip this message>
Gosh, the APL ball. That brings back memories.
For you newbies, he is referring to the IBM Selectric Typewriter, which
had a replaceable ball with all the characters on it, depending on what
special character set you wanted. Selectrics were also used as
interactive terminals. APL uses a lot of arcane characters, so you
needed a special Selectric ball and key tops to program in APL, or read
the code. Selectrics were fun to watch when typing fast. The ball
would spin and tilt just like those gut-spewing rides at traveling
carnivals.
Neat language, too. Back at Brown University in the early 70s, I worked
with OS and CP/67 and CMS, but I learned APL and as an exercise I wrote
the equivalent of the CMS file editor in a half-page of APL code (of
course the CMS editor of the time was a simple line-oriented editor)
--
Bruce A. Black
Senior Software Developer for FDR
Innovation Data Processing 973-890-7300
personal: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
sales info: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
tech support: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
web: www.innovationdp.fdr.com
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