A-0 System

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The A-0 system, written by Grace Hopper in 1951 and 1952 for the UNIVAC I, was the first compiler ever developed for an electronic computer.[1] The A-0 functioned more as a loader or linker than the modern notion of a compiler. A program was specified as a sequence of subroutines and arguments. The subroutines were identified by a numeric code and the arguments to the subroutines were written directly after each subroutine code. The A-0 system converted the specification into machine code that could be fed into the computer a second time to execute the program.

The A-0 system was followed by the A-1, A-2, A-3 (released as ARITH-MATIC), AT-3 (released as MATH-MATIC) and B-0 (released as FLOW-MATIC).

Notes

  1. ^ Hopper "Keynote Address", Sammet pg. 12

References

  1. Hopper, Grace. "The Education of a Computer". Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery Conference (Pittsburgh) May 1952. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
  2. Hopper, Grace. "Automatic Coding for Digital Computers". High Speed Computer Conference (Louisiana State University) February 1955. Remington Rand. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
  3. Hopper, Grace. "Keynote Address". Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages (HOPL) conference. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
  4. Ridgway, Richard E. "Compiling Routines". Proceedings of the 1952 ACM national meeting (Toronto) ACM '52. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
  5. Sammet, Jean (1969). Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals. Prentice-Hall. pp. pg. 12. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)