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From: khayo@MATH.UCLA.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Any Simula-67 fans out there?
Message-ID: <7020@shemp.UCLA.EDU>
Date: Sat, 4-Jul-87 19:16:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: shemp.7020
Posted: Sat Jul  4 19:16:36 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 5-Jul-87 01:28:35 EDT
References: <1288@cullvax.UUCP> <1284@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Sender: root@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: khayo@MATH.UCLA.EDU (Erazm J. Behr)
Organization: UCLA Math Science Department
Lines: 43
Summary: Some recollections (longish)

In article <1284@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk> pjbk@cs.hw.AC.UK (Peter King) writes:
(...)
>The Simula Newsletter has a regular list of publications on
>Simula, (surprisingly, they are often in Polish, Russian, Czech
>-- maybe reliable software will be the Warsaw Pact's answer to star
>Wars! )
   The reason is, I believe, a little less frightening {:-)}
At some point (around 1976) the CS department of Warsaw University
started looking around for a language which could be used to teach
ideas in simulation theory. The boss of the department took fancy
to Simula and it became the standard instructional language, much
like Pascal is here in most places. Since Warsaw Univ. has a lot of
exchange programs with Moscow, Prague etc., they probably contracted
the "disease" soon. Two of my TAs there (Oktaba, Ratajczak - very nice
ladies) wrote a book containing precise syntax diagrams & very
thorough, theoretical description of the coroutine mechanisms involved;
alas, the book is in Polish and not translated to any Western tongue.
   In case anyone is interested - a piece of history. The CS decided
to stay strictly within Algol-like world (S-67 is an extension of
Algol-60, give or take a few details) because until ca. 1975, when
it got hooked up to a CDC Cyber 73, the only computer that the
students could learn on was (... guess ...)
an ancient Danish Regnecentralen GIER transistor affair, built, I
believe, in the late 50's. The story goes that the machine was about
to go to a museum in Denmark, but some enterprising individuals
from the DK-PL friendship society arranged for it to be donated to
the Science & Technology Museum in Warsaw. The good deed was done,
but when the news reached the hackers at the University, they begged
and threatened and weeped until the authorities gave the GIER to them.
There it was equipped with a uniquely Polish contraption called a
"carousel", which consisted of several concentrically arranged tape
drives using some custom-built cartridges, which gave much better
access times than standard drives, and various other home-grown
improvements. Now you see where the "Polish calculator" jokes are
coming from. Anyhow, all the students, including myself, were initially
trained on GIER, which spoke only Algol. You wouldn't believe the
fun involved in punching holes in a tape (sometimes even manually, just
to correct a letter here an there), and leaving the tape in a box in
front of the closed door behind which GIER slept (somewhat like
leaving a virgin beside a dragon's den). Too much said already -
forgive me, this really belongs in comp.ancient.recoll.

>>>>== .sicknature =======>  khayo@math.ucla.edu [Eric Behr]