[sdiy] OT Re: Basic was not an acronym

[Magnus Danielson]

From: "John L Marshall" <john.l.marshall at gte.net>
Subject: [sdiy] OT Re: Basic was not an acronym
Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 17:47:50 -0800

> >BASIC is an acronym.
> 
> I knew that I would suck someone in on that one.
> 
> John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz introduced the language in 1964 at Dartmouth
> College. Much later, technical writers had a compelling need to create an
> acronym out of the word Basic. Many other computer language names are
> acronyms or abbreviations; APL, ALGOL, FORTRAN, JOVIAL, LISP, PL/1, TRAC,
> and so on. Therefore, BASIC must stand for something too. It doesn't, ..er
> didn't. Pascal and Ada are not acronyms either. But, when BASIC was
> introduced it was just plain old BASIC.

I am however upset that you do not mention the wonderfull languague
Intercal in here. Intercal has many usefull functions like that of
SELECT and MINGLE.

> The RSTS/E (PDP-11's) operating system had BASIC built-in. Yes, imbedded
> into the operating system. RSTS/E is a multi-user, multi-tasking operating
> system. Strange to have a *beginner* language available at the command
> prompt to computer system administrators.

How shocking it may seem, a decade later Microsoft tried the same
concept. Have anyone heard of Microsoft? They started out making BASIC
inteprenters and then big nasty IBM forced them to deliver some sort
of OS. The relabling of the Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS)
into MSDOS (actual PCDOS as sold by IBM) is legendary ;O)

> It's purpose was for quick useful programming as well as for instruction.
> Pascal was created by Knuth, at ETH, Zuerich, for instruction. It was used
> commercially. At one time, all programming at Microsoft was done in Pascal.
> But then, programming in Pascal is much like living under the Taliban.

Nononono... Pascal was created by Niklaus Wirth:

http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~wirth/

see his ACM A.M. Turing Award:

http://www.acm.org/awards/taward.html
http://www.acm.org/awards/turing_citations/wirth.html

Donald E. Knuth is indeed a top-notch guy in this field and he
received HIS ACM A.M. Turing award in 1974, ten years before
Prof. Wirth.

http://www.acm.org/awards/turing_citations/knuth.html

It was allready then well deserved, but he accumulated alot of good
work since too.

> Acronyms get renamed for no apparent (ignorant?) reason. Today's literature
> refers to RAID as Redundant Array of Independent Disks. When originally
> conceived RAID stood for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Independent
> hardly applies. Some hardware RAID 3 systems use an electronic spindle lock
> feature on the disk drives. Hardly *Independent*.

Right. Also, the concept had been fully described thoroghly before
some people dubbed it RAID in their research paper which people look
at. Such is life. Fame and glory does not allways fall on those that
did the actual work. Good that Knuth, Wirth and Moog got tokens of
apprechiation.

Cheers,
Magnus