Retrocomputing
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texdr.aft
  • Member for 1 year, 9 months
  • Last seen this week
  • Texas, USA
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About

I like computing history, with an emphasis on the history of programming languages. My display name is a reference to Donald Knuth's early memo about TeX.

My favorite programming languages are Common Lisp, C (via CWEB), and (mainly in theory) Algol 68. The perfect language, in my opinion, would be a blend of these three.

Outside of computing, I am interested in music theory and philology.

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All Questions Answers
Score Newest
question
34
What was the first programming language to support “operator chaining”?
Jun 23, 2021
answer
29
Did COBOL have an English-like "or" operator?
Jun 24, 2021
question
22
When did the IBM 650 have a "Table lookup on Equal" instruction?
Dec 20, 2020
question
17
What was the first programming language, other than Lisp, to have “short-circuiting” Boolean expressions?
Jun 28, 2021
question
16
Why does Pascal have numeric labels?
Jul 11, 2021
question
15
When was the phrase "sufficiently smart compiler" first used?
Jan 14, 2021
question
13
How did the Burroughs B5000/B5500 provide hardware support for implementing Algol's call-by-name?
May 15, 2021
question
13
Are there any primary sources for the “passing constant by reference” behavior in old Fortran compilers?
May 23, 2021
answer
12
Was there a bug in Wirth's original Pascal compiler?
Jun 3, 2021
answer
12
Is it true that "do ... done" blocks in Bash do not end with "od" because od existed before Bash/Bourne shell?
Jun 23, 2021
Top Meta posts
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14
Why restrict history questions? (Or: Can we not restrict history questions?)
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11
Rehearsal Letters: Skipping I, J, O?
8
why there is a "Text line contains an invalid character" after "Undefined control sequence" and why "Q" required further input?
7
When is TeX in "no mode"?
7
What is Holon Programming?
6
In Common Lisp, is there a defined maximum length for a symbol's name?

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