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CAL (programming language)

CAL, short for Conversational Algebraic Language, was a programming language and system designed and developed by Butler Lampson at Berkeley in 1967 for the SDS 940 mainframe computer. CAL is a version of the seminal JOSS language with several cleanups and new features to take advantage of the SDS platform. The Berkeley SDS was used for the development of the Tymshare commercial time-sharing platform and an improved version of CAL was offered as a programming environment to its customers in 1969. Although CAL saw "almost no use", it had a lasting impact by influencing the design of Tymshare SUPER BASIC which copied a number of its features. Some of those features, in turn, appeared in BASIC-PLUS on the PDP-11, which is the direct ancestor of Microsoft BASIC.

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Article summary

CAL, short for Conversational Algebraic Language, was a programming language and system designed and developed by Butler Lampson at Berkeley in 1967 for the SDS 940 mainframe computer. CAL is a version of the seminal JOSS language with several cleanups and new features to take advantage of the SDS platform. The Berkeley SDS was used for the development of the Tymshare commercial time-sharing platform and an improved version of CAL was offered as a programming environment to its customers in 1969. Although CAL saw "almost no use", it had a lasting impact by influencing the design of Tymshare SUPER BASIC which copied a number of its features. Some of those features, in turn, appeared in BASIC-PLUS on the PDP-11, which is the direct ancestor of Microsoft BASIC.

Key claims

  1. release date: 1967 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the release date is "1967". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1317352278

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.