APL
One of the newest advancements around this time was a new
computer language called "APL" which simply stood for A Programming Language.
APL was a fully interactive language designed to run on computer terminals. APL
is an interesting language in that it does not have any "words operators" like
conventional languages, i.e. no "goto", "print", "if, then, else", etc. APL had
mathematical symbols for all such operators such as ""È". To use APL you had a
special APL
type ball for the IBM slectric terminal. If took the free couse, a
type ball was supplied during the class, but if you wanted to program outside of
class you had to buy your own which I did. It was quite an expense for me
a poor student. For the first
year or so,
to run APL it took the entire mainframe so it was only run at limited times. The
then director of the UFCC was a big APL fan so he dedicated the mainframe to APL
during the lunch hour. I later took an APL course from him and he gave a
programming project to write the shortest APL program we could to solve the
Eight Queens chess problem and print out the solution(s). The Eight Queens chess
problem is to place eight queens on a chess board so that no queen can attack
another queen. There are something like 64 solutions although some are mirrors
and reflections of other solutions. Well I managed to write a three line APL
program that generated about 32 of the solutions. The professor was able to
write a one line program although it was about 100 characters long.
As a student operation I typically worked the night and weekend shifts and so I
would often come in and go the computer lab during lunch hour and write APL
programs. One of the first programs I wrote was a Battleship game. I then wrote
a three dimensional Battleship game. I did this just about every day for several
months when one day a grad student in the Agriculture Soils department came up
to me and asked if I wanted to work for him. He had a grant and needed someone
to write statistical programs to analyze his thesis data. He had been trying to
do it but wasn't being very successful at it. I said yes and this is how I got
my job working in the Soils department.
APL Terminal Characters to stick on the
IBM Selectric Terminal
