Lesson plan
ASSIST (computing)
ASSIST (the Assembler System for Student Instruction and Systems Teaching) is an IBM System/370-compatible assembler and interpreter developed in the early 1970s at Penn State University by Graham Campbell and John Mashey along with student assistants. In the late 1960s, computer science education expanded rapidly and university computer centers were faced with a large growth in usage by students, whose needs sometimes differed from professionals in batch processing environments. They needed to run short programs on decks of Punched cards with fast turnaround (minutes, not overnight) as their programs more often included syntax errors. Once they compiled, they would often fault quickly, so optimization and flexibility were far less important than low overhead. WATFIV was a successful pioneering effort to build a FORTRAN compiler tuned for student use. Universities began running it in a dedicated "fast-batch" memory partition with a small run-time limit, such as 5 seconds on an IBM System/360 Model 67). The low limit enabled fast turnaround and avoided waste of time by programs stuck in infinite loops. WATFIV's success helped inspire development of ASSIST, PL/C and other student-oriented programs that fit the "fast-batch" model that became widely used among universities.…
Article summary
ASSIST (the Assembler System for Student Instruction and Systems Teaching) is an IBM System/370-compatible assembler and interpreter developed in the early 1970s at Penn State University by Graham Campbell and John Mashey along with student assistants. In the late 1960s, computer science education expanded rapidly and university computer centers were faced with a large growth in usage by students, whose needs sometimes differed from professionals in batch processing environments. They needed to run short programs on decks of Punched cards with fast turnaround (minutes, not overnight) as their programs more often included syntax errors. Once they compiled, they would often fault quickly, so optimization and flexibility were far less important than low overhead. WATFIV was a successful pioneering effort to build a FORTRAN compiler tuned for student use. Universities began running it in a dedicated "fast-batch" memory partition with a small run-time limit, such as 5 seconds on an IBM System/360 Model 67). The low limit enabled fast turnaround and avoided waste of time by programs stuck in infinite loops. WATFIV's success helped inspire development of ASSIST, PL/C and other student-oriented programs that fit the "fast-batch" model that became widely used among universities.…
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
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