Re: Apple ProDOS CP/M disk & file utility

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <3af5f154.35230051@news-server.kc.rr.com>,
Dennis Doms <SynABit@kc.invalid> wrote:
 
> In article <9d4cri$f3s$1@merope.saaf.se>, pausch@saaf.se (Paul
> Schlyter) wrote:
> 
>>One thing I strongly disliked about the Apple/UCSD Pascal system was
>>that it was a single-language environment.  I liked the CP/M
>>environment much better because it allowed you to easily switch
>>programming languages.  Anyway, one of the first Pascal programs I
>>wrote for CP/M was a program which read Pascal source files off Apple
>>Pascal disks - then I had to deal with the details of the Apple
>>Pascal file system, and also the different sector interleaving of the
>>Apple Pascal system compared to Apple CP/M.
> 
> There was also a FORTRAN compiler
 
Yep -- Apple Fortran, and you had to reboot your Apple II with the
Apple Fortran instead of Apple Pascal diskettes when you wanted to
switch languages.  Apple Fortran was a subset Fortran-77 compiler
which quite notably lacked DOUBLE PRECISION numbers.  Therefore I
preferred Fortran-80 in CP/M even though it was a Fortran-66 compiler
becaise it had DOUBLE PRECISION variables and library functions.
 
> (not counting the 6502 assembler).
 
Yep -- that assembler was called "TLA" = "The Last Assembler" - the
idea was that TLA used data files to implement various procesors and
therefore no other assembler had to be rewritten after TLA.  The
Apple Pascal/Fortran systems had data files for TLA only for the 6502
processor.  I seriously doubt that TLA could handle e.g. the
segmented memory addressing of the 80x86 family of processors
though...  :-))) And, as we now know, many assemblers have been
written after TLA.....
 
At about the same time another piece of software was written which
was called "The Last One", implying that it was the last program
which ever had to be written!!!  "The Last One" was targeted to those
writing administrative programs in BASIC: instead of writing the code
yourself, you just ran "The Last One" and answered the questions it
asked you.  When you were done, "The Last One" produced a BASIC
source file of a program according to your specifications.  However,
many programs have been written after "The Last One".....  including
programs which outputs other programs; today such programs are merely
called "wizards" and no-one believes they're the ultimate solution to
all future programming problems.... :-)
 
 
> And I believe Apple's PILOT may have been based on the UCSD system (or
> at least written Apple Pascal). But those are all I can think of.
 
-- 
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