View source for 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.
----