A-0 System

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Short description: Programming language

The A-0 system (Arithmetic Language version 0) was an early[1] compiler related tool developed for electronic computers, written by Grace Murray Hopper[2] in 1951 and 1952 originally for the UNIVAC I.[3] The A-0 functioned more as a loader or linker than the modern notion of a compiler.[4] [5] [6] A program was specified as a sequence of subroutines and its arguments. The subroutines were identified by a numeric code and the arguments to the subroutines were written directly after each subroutine code. The A-0 system converted the specification into machine code that could be fed into the computer a second time to execute the said program.

The A-0 system was followed by the A-1, A-2,[7] A-3 (released as ARITH-MATIC), AT-3 (released as MATH-MATIC) and B-0 (released as FLOW-MATIC).

The A-2 system was developed at the UNIVAC division of Remington Rand in 1953 and released to customers by the end of that year.[8] Customers were provided the source code for A-2 and invited to send their improvements back to UNIVAC. Thus, A-2 could be considered an example of the result of an early philosophy similar to free and open-source software.[9]

See also

Notes

  1. "List of early compilers and assemblers". http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2017/05/21/evidence-for-28-possible-compilers-in-1957. 
  2. Ridgway, Richard (1952). "Compiling routines". Proceedings of the 1952 ACM national meeting (Toronto) on - ACM '52. pp. 1–5. doi:10.1145/800259.808980. ISBN 9781450379250. 
  3. Hopper "Keynote Address", Sammet pg. 12
  4. Hopper, Grace. "Keynote Address". doi:10.1145/800025.1198341. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800025.1198341. 
  5. Bruderer, Herbert. "Did Grace Hopper Create the First Compiler?". https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/268001-did-grace-hopper-create-the-first-compiler/fulltext. 
  6. Strawn, George; Strawn, Candace (2015). "Grace Hopper: Compilers and Cobol". IT Professional 17 (Jan.-Feb. 2015): 62–64. doi:10.1109/MITP.2015.6. https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/it/2015/01/mit2015010062/13rRUxCitFF. 
  7. * "PAPERS: Automatic Programming: The A 2 Compiler System -- Part I". Computers and Automation 4 (9): 25–29. Sep 1955. https://archive.org/details/sim_computers-and-people_1955-09_4_9/page/n24/. Retrieved 2020-09-05. 
  8. Ceruzzi, Paul (1998). A History of Modern Computing. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262032551. https://archive.org/details/historyofmodernc00ceru. 
  9. "Heresy & Heretical Open Source: A Heretic's Perspective". http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Heretical-Open-Source. 

External links

References

  1. Hopper, Grace (May 1952). "The Education of a Computer". pp. 243–249. doi:10.1145/609784.609818. http://xover.mud.at/~marty/iug2/p243-hopper.pdf. 
  2. Hopper, Grace (16 February 1955). "Automatic Coding for Digital Computers". Remington Rand. http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/univac/HopperAutoCodingPaper_1955.pdf. 
  3. Hopper, Grace. "Keynote Address". 
  4. Ridgway, Richard K. (1952). "Compiling Routines". 
  5. Sammet, Jean (1969). Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals. Prentice-Hall. pp. g. 12.