Looking for information on a programming language called WhatDoesItDo

Question

I am looking for information on a training language called "WhatDoesItDo". It was used in 1978 at Austin Community College on a Motorola 6800 CPU.

If anyone has any information, I would appreciate it very, very much.

Answer 1

I am looking for information on a training language called "WhatDoesItDo".

It was called WADUZITDO

Well, for training purposes, you might check out the online-version at Waduzitdo.org. It hosts a faithful (*1) port to JavaScript (*2), even including a few quirks of the original 6800 version. It offers as well an online reference of all legal instructions.

It was used in 1978 at Austin Community College on a Motorola 6800 CPU.

Serious? Now that's a cool fact to know. Do you have any reference?

If anyone has any information,

As usual, the Esolang-Wiki got some information, including a link to the Archive.org copy for the original Byte article of September 1978 (p.166), showing the 6800 Assembly source.

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*1 - Sans the editor. A text box is simply more convenient today.

*2 - The port was made on Christmas 2005 and contains some 'tricks' to ensure workings on different Browsers (anyone remember the Browser Wars? The early 2000s were a horror for web applications) and relies on certain workings for text output which seem no longer true (or maybe simply optimized away by modern JS engines).

Answer 2

A CP/M implementation can be found in the SIG/M archives, volume 28 as waduzit.com, waduzit.doc and waduzit.pas.

From the Pascal source:

{
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ PROGRAM TITLE:        What Does It Do?                +
+                                                       +
+ WRITTEN BY:           Larry Kheriaty, Computer Center +
+                       Western Washington Univ.        +
+                       Bellingham, Wa. 98225           +
+                       BYTE MAG, Sept 1978             +
+                                                       +
+ SUMMARY:                                              +
+ A minimal PILOT interpreter.  A sample of what can be +
+ done with the high level language Pascal. Commands    +
+ will be found in the file WADUZIT.DOC.                +