JesHistory

Here's a quick recap:

1965, DonNelson writes English in what noted historian HenryEggers refers to as "Flowchart Notation Language", with each instruction being represented by a box. This predates the assembler.

1968, DickPick takes the code to a Sigma 7 machine at the University of California, Irvine.

1968-70 The Editor arrives. It is pitched as the update mechanism. Customers don't buy into that, so "Batch" is born. (Think B/ADD here.) Curiously, Batch was an attempt at implementing the Update Language portion of Nelson's original flowcharts. While it never reached completion in Nelson's lifetime, Dick Pick completed it around 1990 in what he called the "Update Processor". (Another story in and of itself). Also in this time block is when the Pick assembler arrives. Both the Editor and assembler were written by Chandru Murthi.

Around the same time, PROC shows up. Everyone was used to JCL, and this was simply the Pick JCL language. It is believed that Chandru wrote this as well.

1973-74 The assembler debugger arrives, written by KenSimms. Chandru observes that it was an impressive piece of work, given that he didn't have a debugger to work with.

Circa 1973-1974 Will Olsen writes the "Infact User Modes", adding user-exits to PROC to facilitate file update. One of Olsen's early clients was the CIA. The Infact User-Modes became part of the basic Pick distribution.

1974-75 BASIC arrives, written by KenSimms. The Pick version of this is called "SBASIC" (Ken's initial). The Microdata version is called "EBASIC", cleverly named by Tom Ells at Microdata.

Circa 75-? John Timmons and Paul Desjardine produce "PORC". (spelling double-checked on that). PORC was based on PROC, with each of Olsen's user-exits replaced with an instruction. PORC becomes the starting point for RPL, headed up by Tim Holland while under the employ of SMI in Chicago.

Compliments of JonSisk, http://www.jes.com, reproduced with permission.

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