[SIGCIS-Members] Call for "paper"

[Murray Turoff]

It took the introduction of time sharing to break down the financial barrier
to online programming and a lot of other creative activities where the main
frames could be shared by many users at the same time.  The earliest
systems to bring this about was the JOSS system at RAND and an oscilloscope
based numerical programing system at UC Berkely.
JOSS was a very innovative design as a programming language and if RAND had
had more sense about allowing it to be propagated with out tying it to the
specialized terminal RAND developed for it, it might have beaten BASIC in
popularity.   The developers were a two person team of a systems programmer
and a psychologist.  If you have not seen the language take a look at it.
A later advanced version of joss was used to development the first hospital
information system at a hospital in Boston.

On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 12:00 PM, Dag Spicer <dspicer at computerhistory.org>
wrote:

> Woz still has his Apple II hardware and software design notes… in a
> binder, on paper, handwritten.  He has shown them to me.  The most obvious
> observation on this theme is that in the days of “cards and paper”
> computing, with its limited memory and a code-exeute-debug cycle measured
> in days, people took much longer to code and were more deliberate in
> writing software. In theory, people could write better software.  In
> practice, programmers often just spent hours and hours waiting with nothing
> to do.  (A related issue: modern-day programmers often explain their lack
> of apparent activity at times by saying “I’m compiling right now.”
> Managers invariably accept this as sensible and valid… even though it’s a
> running joke among programmers that the benefit of this explanation is that
> it really just gives them a bit of downtime to relax).
>
> A general observation about card and paper computing in the 1960s: Bob
> Bemer, I think (paraphrase): "Computers cost $600 an hour; your time (as a
> programmer) costs $12 an hour.  Guess what we’re optimising for?”
>
> Dag
> --
> Dag Spicer
> Senior Curator
> Computer History Museum
> Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
> 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard
> Mountain View, CA 94043-1311
>
> Tel: +1 650 810 1035
> Fax: +1 650 810 1055
>
>
>
> On Sep 2, 2015, at 6:38 AM, dave.walden.family at gmail.com<mailto:
> dave.walden.family at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have a vague, perhaps wrong, memory of Woz's autobiography saying he
> wrote code in notebooks for machines he was imagining.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
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-- 





*please send messages to murray.turoff at gmail.com <murray.turoff at gmail.com>
do not use @njit.edu <http://njit.edu> addressDistinguished Professor
EmeritusInformation Systems, NJIThomepage: http://is.njit.edu/turoff
<http://is.njit.edu/turoff>*
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