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The NPS Helps Foster Microcomputing Not only that, it didn't have any good high level language. So. here I am. stuck with a stupid System/370, no high level language, and no direct access to the computer. This was a technonerd nightmare. But then. Old Captain Williams' words rang in my ears, and I took particular solace in the fact that I was not floating over the swirling seas of the Gulf of Tonkin with no computer at hand whatsoever. Ok. so first you make friends with the computer operator at NPS's Computer Center. Then. make friends with the systems programmers. I met a nice lady, an astute programmer, Kathy Strutynski, who was later instrumental in programming upgrades to CP/M, and with relationships between Microsoft and DRI many years later. The NPS accorded me a few specific tasks. First, I was to teach computer courses. Second. I was to be on the "Crypto Staff," and third I was to take inventory of liquor at the Officers' Mess. I enjoyed the teaching with a passion, but the crypto duty over that three years resulted in only one message that transmitted a notice to an Admiral "that a free turkey was due to arrive on Thanksgiving." It took about an hour for me to decode that one. I never could figure the inventory. But, there was a little lady named Mabel Johnston, who, at about her 75 years of age, could figure it quite nicely. She patiently showed me journals of numbers in column after column because I, being the Naval Officer In Charge, was required to verify her numbers to the penny. Honestly, I just watched her and believed her additions, subtractions. allocations to inventory, taxes, and on and on and on. That was a risk, but after all, you must believe in a grandmother, right? Mrs. Johnston knew the ropes. Years later, "Visicalc" on the Apple took some of the toil. Do you think that Bricklin's Visicalc made a substantial contribution to the success of Apple's PCs? I think so, because ifl could have had Dan's spreadsheet at the time, I'm sure I would have impressed old Mrs. Johnston. But, somehow, I don't think she would have taken notice of any sort. She would've just moved to the next page in her ledger. 32 Computer Connections
How to Program the IBM System/370 How to Program the IBM System/370 Here I am at the Naval Postgraduate School in 1970. Ok, better than Viet Nam, but not better than the U-Dub's 85500. The NPS had just installed a System/370, one of the first delivered by IBM. The IBM System/370 was an enigma for me. No languages. No access. I started with Nicklaus Wirth's PL/360, a sort of high-level assembly language. It wasn't any good. Wirth went on to define the Pascal programming language which was a considerable improvement. Faced with no reasonable high-level language softwaretools, I went to PL/I. IBM's runaway attempt at displacing FORTRAN and ALGOL. How to be a Professor at NPS As for my role at the NPS, some considered me a hard teacher. I don't think I was. A bunch of students said I was. So judge for yourself. I often taught the Data Structures course. The class was called CS3 l l l. To combat boredom, one semester on a first day, I entered the classroom and told the thirty-odd students that "we will now have a pop-quiz." Everyone must place their books and notes on the floor and they, being good Naval Officers, did so. The problem that I proposed was to write a program that would "perform symbolic differentiation and simplification of polynomials to any order." Well, I can tell you right now that was a huge order. And I, being professor-incharge, may have barely gotten into a solution within that fifty minutes. Cruel, but I wanted to get a line on how my students thought about the problem of problem solving. I didn't really expect them to get to a solution of any sort whatsoever. Those students worked away at that problem for fifteen minutes, at least. Then I said, "stop what you are doing now. I want you to think about how you are solving this problem, and what mind tools you are using at this moment." Of course, the whole thing was a ruse, and the students were completely relieved, because not one could come close to a solution on that first day. I asked how their Computer Connections 33
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Page 4 and 5: To My Friends and Business Associat
Page 6 and 7: CHAPTER 4 Silicon Valley Micros 39
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Page 10 and 11: One Person's Need For a Personal Co
Page 12 and 13: One Person's Need For a Personal Co
Page 14 and 15: Seattle and the University of Washi
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Page 42 and 43: Silicon Valley Micros Bob always ha
Page 44 and 45: Silicon Valley Micros Take out Tom
Page 46 and 47: Silicon Valley Micros devastated. T
Page 48 and 49: Silicon Valley Micros I suspect Bob
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Page 54 and 55: The Advent of CP/M Quite a reasonab
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Page 72 and 73: Digital Research The Day Intel Went
Page 74 and 75: Digital Research became the way mic
Page 76 and 77: Digital Research Whv the Heck PU!?
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