Languages from Hell

>Preference will be given to languages spoken of only in horrified
>whispers.


The ultimate horror: IBM's JCL. In "Computer Lib" (1974, revised 1987)
Ted Nelson comments:


Some Call It Despicable.
Some Call It Home.


>...1401 Autocoder


Despite the name, Autocoder was just an assembler.




>How about Magic/L? It's an incrementally compiled/interpreted language
>that combines the worst features of every language and adds a couple of
>it own.


If I remember correctly, Magic/L (pronounced "Magical") was Arnold
Epstein's attempt to make Forth look like language rather than a
religion. It was probably derived from STOIC, a public-domain derivative
of Forth written by Jonathan Sachs at the Harvard/MIT biomedical
enginerring laboratory. Jonathan, incidentally, went on to write Lotus 1
2-3.


I think I've got a Magic/L manual (hardcopy) around, if GLS is
interested. But I'm not sure that syntax-free languages (ie. Forth
derivatives) are really candidates for retro-compilers in the same sense
as Algol, MAD, etc.


Jeffrey Zurkow
jeff.zurkow>hannel1.com
jlz@world.std.com
[Autocoder may have been an assembler, but that didn't prevent a lot of
vendors from selling autocoder-to-Cobol translators. -John]
--

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