User:Dinosaur: Difference between revisions

In 1970 at Auckland University, the Applied Mathematics class introduced the AMI computer, a decimal computer with a thousand five-digit words of storage, which one programmed in machine code only, thus learning about the bootstrap, the loader and the relocating loader, as well as writing assembleassembler programmes to calculate sin(x), etc. with Tschebychev polynomials used to spread the accuracy more evenly and with fewer terms though odder coefficients. This computer was actually manifested via an interpreter on an IBM1130. We were also introduced to Fortran IV, and could have actual operating access to its predecessor, an IBM1620 which worked in Fortran II. Later that year I wrote an interpreter for the AMI system for the IBM1620, and thereby won four milkshakes from a friend, Michael Dowling, who took the AMI course the following year and used my programme for test runs. On one of his assignments, he had difficulty and test runs were facilitated by the immediate feedback. I happened by, and the discussion went somewhat as follows:

In 1972 the family moved to Wellington on my father's promotion to Chief Surveyor, and so to Victoria University where we students had access to the IBM1130 and Clive Nicolson was the pre-eminent expert and the same height as me - 6'4" so we could not ovelookoverlook each other. We got stuck in to the operating system and miscellaneous device drivers, none of which had much to do with our course work, which had little to do with computers or the likes of tables of prime numbers, or e calculated to 132,800 places. Thus, the analysis of the results of a physics experiment might be facilitated by using a computer programme, but using computers was not a part of the course. In other words, unlike computer science courses where the programme is assessed on aesthetic grounds, these programmes were written to produce results, and correct ones at that. This proved to be an employment advantage.