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Re: Star Trek and APL

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On Monday, April 15, 2002 at 11:26:33 a.m. UTC-4, Brian Oliver wrote:
> Ken Iverson <k...@interlog.com> wrote in message news:<20020414.1...@sol.sun.csd.unb.ca>...
> > Paul Berry's Starmap was perhaps the earliest APL program
> > concerning stars. Running first on a typewriter, the stars were
> > ordered for line-by-line output. When CRT terminals became
> > available, it was modified to light the stars in random order,
> > and the program came to be called The Creation.
> Ken, let's not forget that Paul had a collaborator in the
> Starmap effort. I believe his name was "Thoraldssen" and
> he was the astronomer half of the project. Brian
Ken Iverson, now that just blows my mind.
Anyways ...
In 1979 I was in HS grade 13 in Ottawa, Ontario Canada.  For the students of my pre-calculus class, IP Sharp provided a type writer terminal connected to one of their machines.  They dedicated ~ $10K and 1 month of computer time for the 25 students.  I recall that after seven days out logins were disabled.  The teacher reported that, much to the suprise of IP Sharp,  we had already blown through the $10K.  IP Sharp did an investigation as to what we had been up too.  I guess IP Sharp was reasonable impressed because after two days they re-enabled our logins and agreed to allow us the remainder of the month originally promised.  I understood that in the final re-conning the 25 of us spent  ~S100K.  APL has had a special place in my heart ever since.  
While at UNB.ca for my undergrad, APL (STSC APL) was a second year course.  One day the prof brought in a guy from UNB's computing centre to describe how he programmed the entire scoring and game tracing system for the Canadian Curling Associations Championships (pre-1988).  Asked why he would use an archaic and esoteric language as APL  he stated, at the time APL had all of the features required to complete the task quickly.  Basically, APL was fit for purpose so why not.
Also I should add that one of the 25 found the APL Star Trek game on IP Sharps system.  I certain a fair chunk of the money was spent on killing Klingons and Romulans. 

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