|
Trabb Pardo–Knuth Algorithm
The TPK algorithm is a simple computer program, program introduced by Donald Knuth and Luis Trabb Pardo to illustrate the evolution of computer programming languages. In their 1977 work "The Early Development of Programming Languages", Trabb Pardo and Knuth introduced a small program that involved Array data structure, arrays, indexing, mathematical Function (mathematics), functions, subroutines, I/O, conditional (programming), conditionals and iteration. They then wrote implementations of the algorithm in several early programming languages to show how such concepts were expressed. To explain the name "TPK", the authors referred to Grimm's law (which concerns the consonants 't', 'p', and 'k'), the sounds in the word "typical", and their own initials (Trabb Pardo and Knuth). In a talk based on the paper, Knuth said: The algorithm Knuth describes it as follows:Donald Knuth, ''TPK in INTERCAL'', Chapter 7 of ''Selected Papers on Fun and Games'', 2011 (p. 41) In pseudocode: ask f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Program
A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program in its human-readable form is called source code. Source code needs another computer program to execute because computers can only execute their native machine instructions. Therefore, source code may be translated to machine instructions using the language's compiler. ( Assembly language programs are translated using an assembler.) The resulting file is called an executable. Alternatively, source code may execute within the language's interpreter. If the executable is requested for execution, then the operating system loads it into memory and starts a process. The central processing unit will soon switch to this process so it can fetch, decode, and then execute each machine instruction. If the source code is requested for execution, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Short Code (computer Language)
Short Code was one of the first higher-level languages developed for an electronic computer. Unlike machine code, Short Code statements represented mathematic expressions rather than a machine instruction. Also known as an automatic programming, the source code was not compiled but executed through an interpreter to simplify the programming process; the execution time was much slower though. History Short Code was proposed by John Mauchly in 1949 and originally known as Brief Code. William Schmitt implemented a version of Brief Code in 1949 for the BINAC computer, though it was never debugged and tested. The following year Schmitt implemented a new version of Brief Code for the UNIVAC I, where it was now known as Short Code (also Short Order Code). A revised version of Short Code was developed in 1952 for the Univac II by A. B. Tonik and J. R. Logan. While Short Code represented expressions, the representation itself was not direct and required a process of ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tony Brooker
Ralph Anthony Brooker (22 September 1925 – 20 November 2019), was a British computer scientist known for developing the Mark 1 Autocode. He was educated at Emanuel School and graduated in Mathematics from Imperial College in 1945 and returned there in 1947 as assistant lecturer. His first computer project was the construction of a fast multiplier unit from electro-mechanical relays. This was taken over by Sid Michaelson and K. D. Tocher and incorporated into ICCE, the Imperial College Computing Engine based on the same technology. By then (1949)Brooker had moved to the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory to work for Maurice Wilkes on software development for EDSAC. In October 1951 Brooker joined the Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University, where he took over from Alan Turing the task of writing programming manuals and running a user service on the Ferranti Mark 1 computer. It was his experience with the rather tedious Manchester machine-coding conv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manchester Mark 1
The Manchester Mark 1 was one of the earliest stored-program computers, developed at the Victoria University of Manchester, England from the Manchester Baby (operational in June 1948). Work began in August 1948, and the first version was operational by April 1949; a program written to search for Mersenne primes ran error-free for nine hours on the night of 16/17 June 1949. The machine's successful operation was widely reported in the British press, which used the phrase "electronic brain" in describing it to their readers. That description provoked a reaction from the head of the University of Manchester's Department of Neurosurgery, the start of a long-running debate as to whether an electronic computer could ever be truly creative. The Mark 1 was to provide a computing resource within the university, to allow researchers to gain experience in the practical use of computers, but it very quickly also became a prototype on which the design of Ferranti's commercial version could ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Backus
John Warner Backus (December 3, 1924 – March 17, 2007) was an American computer scientist. He directed the team that invented and implemented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language, and was the inventor of the Backus–Naur form (BNF), a widely used notation to define formal language syntax. He later did research into the function-level programming paradigm, presenting his findings in his influential 1977 Turing Award lecture "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?" The IEEE awarded Backus the W. W. McDowell Award in 1967 for the development of FORTRAN. He received the National Medal of Science in 1975 and the 1977 Turing Award" for profound, influential, and lasting contributions to the design of practical high-level programming systems, notably through his work on FORTRAN, and for publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages". He retired in 1991 and died at his home in Ashland, Oregon on March ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laning And Zierler System
The Laning and Zierler system (sometimes called "George" by its users) was the first operating algebraic compiler, that is, a system capable of accepting mathematical formulas in algebraic notation and producing equivalent machine code (the term compiler had not yet been invented and the system was referred to as "an interpretive program"). It was implemented in 1952 for the MIT WHIRLWIND by J. Halcombe Laning and Neal Zierler. It is preceded by non-algebraic compilers such as the UNIVAC A-0. Description The system accepted formulas in a more or less algebraic notation. It respected the standard rules for operator precedence, allowed nested parentheses, and used superscripts to indicate exponents. It was among the first programming systems to allow symbolic variable names and allocate storage automatically. The system also automated the following tasks: floating point computation, linkage to subroutines for the basic functions of analysis (sine, etc.) and printing, and array ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grace Hopper
Grace Brewster Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy Rear admiral (United States), rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I, Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first Linker (computing), linkers. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today. Prior to joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy Reserves. Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alick Glennie
Alick Edwards Glennie (1925–2003) was a British computer scientist, most famous for having developed Autocode, which many people regard as the first ever computer compiler.Knuth, Donald E.; Pardo, Luis Trabb, "Early development of programming languages", Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology (Marcel Dekker) 7: 419–493 Glennie worked with Alan Turing on several projects, including the Manchester Mark 1 The Manchester Mark 1 was one of the earliest stored-program computers, developed at the Victoria University of Manchester, England from the Manchester Baby (operational in June 1948). Work began in August 1948, and the first version was oper .... Glennie subsequently worked at Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) where he was responsible in the early 1960s in developing FORTRAN compilers for several large computers inc. IBM 709, IBM 7090, IBM 7030 ("Stretch") and also ICT Atlas. He pioneered a method of developing the compiler for the Atlas on the IB ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autocode
Autocode is the name of a family of "simplified coding systems", later called programming languages, devised in the 1950s and 1960s for a series of digital computers at the Universities of Manchester, Cambridge and London. Autocode was a generic term; the autocodes for different machines were not necessarily closely related as are, for example, the different versions of the single language Fortran. Today the term is used to refer to the family of early languages descended from the Manchester Mark 1 autocoder systems, which were generally similar. In the 1960s, the term autocoders was used more generically as to refer to any high-level programming language using a compiler. Examples of languages referred to as autocodes are COBOL and Fortran. Glennie's Autocode The first autocode and its compiler were developed by Alick Glennie in 1952 for the Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester and is considered by some to be the first compiled programming language. His main goa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corrado Böhm
Corrado Böhm (17 January 1923 – 23 October 2017) was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and a computer scientist known especially for his contributions to the theory of structured programming, constructive mathematics, combinatory logic, lambda calculus, and the semantics and implementation of functional programming languages. Work In his PhD dissertation (in Mathematics, at ETH Zurich, 1951; published in 1954), Böhm describes for the first time a full meta-circular compiler, that is a translation mechanism of a programming language, written in that same language. His most influential contribution is the so-called structured program theorem, published in 1966 together with Giuseppe Jacopini. Together with Alessandro Berarducci, he demonstrated an isomorphism between the strictly-positive algebraic data types and the polymorphic lambda-terms, otherwise known as Böhm–Berarducci encoding. In the lambda calculus, he established an important separat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
