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From: doug@escher.UUCP (Douglas J Freyburger)
Newsgroups: net.columbia
Subject: Re: Old fashion computing practices @ NASA
Message-ID: <46@escher.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 17:27:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: escher.46
Posted: Fri Aug  9 17:27:56 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Aug-85 00:52:28 EDT
References: <1079@cbdkc1.UUCP>
Organization: NASA/JPL, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 26

> A former prof of mine, and good friend, worked for NASA through a subcontractor
> for a period of time after receiving his PhD. He told me that there were "old"
> diehards that still used cards to program when he was there (74-77). This was
> inspite of the fact that modern terminals were available.  He also said that 
> one of the main launch sequencing programs for the shuttle was written
> in FORTRAN and it included hundreds of lines of EQU's at the beginning. 
> 
> Can anyone confirm or deny this?
> 
> George Erhart

I sure can.  I don't know about space shuttle software, but
there are lots of computers that run nothing but ForTran-66
programs or older being put through the latest ForTran compilers.
Of course they use line editors on their shiney new VT100s
because they don't know about about screen editors.  There
are only a few groups changing (oh-so-slowly) over to the
radical new languages that can out in the early 70s (Pascal
and C).  Although, the shuttle software was written by IBM
people under contract, so they probably used a mish-mash of
PL-1 and ForTran.  There was also work down by Rockwell
that I'll guess is a mish-mash of Jovial and ForTran.

Doug Freyburger		DOUG@JPL-VLSI, DOUG@JPL-ROBOTICS,
JPL 171-235		...escher!doug, doug@aerospace,
Pasadena, CA 91109	etc.