Dinosaur
Joined 24 August 2022
→First Machine Code
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Once we had bootstrapped our comprehension to this higher level, the course moved on to the likes of writing assembler 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. This computer's electronics were discrete transistors on printed circuit boards - I missed out on "first generation" valve electronics for computers and the still earlier electro-mechanical devices, though we did have access to a cardpunch/printer whose electro-mechanical workings could be programmed via a plug board, and the Physics lab offered a Friden electric-powered mechanical calculator and like everyone else, I tried out dividing by zero. Whirrrr... Thus, I am a dinosaur of the Jurassic period, not the Triassic.
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, indeed, by flicking certain switches on the computer's console, trace output for each step could be elicited. I happened by, and the discussion went somewhat as follows:
"It will work." "No, it won't" - first milkshake.
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