[COFF] Re: NOT DELETED 8 (OS/360)

[Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>]

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On Sat, 9 Mar 2024, steve jenkin wrote:

> Ken Robinson told a few horror stories of OS/360’s evil (my word) error 
> reporting.

Ken Robinson had lots of stories :-)

He was brilliant (and he gave us the "Fast Assembler" with 1-1/2 passes).

I did catch him off-guard when I told him that I knew about Ackermann's 
Function (and implemented it in APL\360) :-)

OK, now for Graham McMahon[*] (my third CompSci lecturer -- SNOBOL etc -- 
I am trying to keep ther memories alive):

He wrote a program (presumably in /360 assembly) to solve those "White to 
move and mate in two" chess problems, and he gave me an object deck (I 
never did see the source).

Well, me being me I used it to solve those puzzles, and send in the entry 
:-)

I think they cottoned on, though, because they stopped printing my 
submissions :-(

Now, think about it: a chess problem solver, in 360 assembler?  It must've 
been using alpha-beta searches i.e. a stack, surely...  And with only 4K 
segments?  I'd've loved to see that source code.

And I also remember a Barry Wragg?  I think that he was a tutor, not a 
lecturer; I remember him saying that "IBM manuals are written to impress, 
not inform".

[*]
Ah yes;  I walked into Dr. McMahon's Comp Sci class with my "trannie" 
blaring Nixon's "I shall resign the Presidency", and he stopped the
class :-)

-- Dave