Python Productivity Gain?

[Thomas Heller]

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

> Scott David Daniels wrote:
>> 
>> Robert Brewer wrote:
>> 
>> > Gerrit wrote:
>> > ... 17 to go.
>> Actually I've seen two 17's, so I'll skip 16.
>> 
>> Machine, Assembly(>8), Fortran(I,II,IV,V), Snobol, Lisp,
>> Algol, Simscript, SAIL, Interlisp, Smalltalk, C, YACC/LEX/FLEX,
>> SLOE (microcode), Pascal, Class-C, Oz, C++, LML, Scheme, SQL,
>> Python.
>
> All right, machine language!  Was that with actual toggle input, or 
> were you hand-translating from assembly and entering hex on a keypad?
> I remember being able to write small print routines on the Commodores
> in straight machine language... hmm.. 


Keypad? Which keypad???

All I had was a couple of switches, and a pushbutton.
I had to set the switches to the binary values, and press the pushbutton
to write it.  I do not remember whether the address was incremented
automatically or not.  And LEDs to show the binary pattern.


> A9 80 20 FF D2 40 anyone? :-)
>

Hm, no, not hex.  This was an IM6100 microprocessor from intersil, a
clone of the DEC PDP-8 on one chip.  The 8080 was too expensive for me.
Around 1976..., built on a kind of wire wrap board - there were no
prefabricated kits at that time.

It has a word width of 12 bit, and octal notation was natural.  I still
remember some of the opcodes: ISZ - 'increment and scip if zero' for
example.

>> Machine, Assembly(>8), Fortran(I,II,IV,V), Snobol, Lisp,

Ok, ok.  Machine (see above), micro tiny Basic (home grown interpreter
written in machine code), then fortran IV (university), real assembly,
basic again, aztec C, Turbo Pascal, Tiny C (remember the book?) ported
to an embedded system, MS C, Prolog, scheme (several), Smalltalk, Python.

How many to go?

Thomas

Oh, and we didn't have a bed to sleep in. Ah, that's another story...