On 02/27/2015 12:04 AM, Elardus Engelbrecht wrote: > Ed Gould wrote: > >> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/26/my_aunt_was_a_human_assembler_at_nasa/ > > Wow! Interesting. My jaw also dropped to the floor. > > Ok, ok, ok, I give up, we are too spoiled today with all these fancy systems, > languages and applications and games we today have. > > Those people have *nothing*. Just pencil+eraser and paper and references to > OpCodes. Then they write programs by hand without fancy compilers and syntax > checkers. > > Groete / Greetings > Elardus Engelbrecht > >
This is weird. The article implies people were doing machine coding for an IBM 704 by hand in 1960s to evaluate complex mathematical formulas! But, the SHARE Assembly Program for symbolic coding and FORTRAN compiler were both available for the IBM 704 by 1956 (Wikipedia even has a picture of the October 1956 IBM 704 FORTRAN Reference Manual). Although "simulation" is mentioned once, this may be a reference to mathematical flight simulation rather than a reference to simulation of unavailable computer hardware. The way the article is worded implies coding by hand of mathematical equations needed for space craft design for evaluation by an IBM 704, which suggests the generated code was machine code for the IBM 704. If that were the case, it wouldn't have made sense to do the assembly translation by hand in the 1960s, unless IBM 704 run time was harder to come by than human "assemblers". On the other hand if simulation of computer hardware for an on-board flight computer was involved, hand assembly of code for testing on a simulator running on an IBM 704 would make much sense. Perhaps the remembered time line in the article is incorrect. Some of the on-line articles on NASA history suggest that by 1959 NASA was already phasing out use of the IBM 704 for IBM 7094s and raises into question whether an IBM 704 would still be in use by NASA much into the 1960s. If the IBM 704 work in question started prior to 1956, fewer software options would have been available. -- Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR jcew...@acm.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
