SMALL
Encyclopedia
SMALL, Small Machine Algol Like Language, is a programming
language
developed by Dr. Nevil Brownlee of Auckland University.
-like code that ran on a small machine. It also included the string type for easier text manipulation.
SMALL was used extensively from about 1980 to 1985 at Auckland University as a programming teaching aid, and for some internal projects. Originally written to run on a Burroughs Corporation B6700 Main frame in Fortran
IV, subsequently rewritten in SMALL and ported to a DEC PDP-10
Architecture (on the Operating System
TOPS-10
) and IBM S360 Architecture (on the Operating System VM/CMS
).
About 1985, SMALL had some object-oriented
features added to handle structures (that were missing from the early language), and to formalise file manipulation operations.
Computer programming
Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
developed by Dr. Nevil Brownlee of Auckland University.
History
The aim of the language was to enable people to write ALGOLALGOL
ALGOL is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in the mid 1950s which greatly influenced many other languages and became the de facto way algorithms were described in textbooks and academic works for almost the next 30 years...
-like code that ran on a small machine. It also included the string type for easier text manipulation.
SMALL was used extensively from about 1980 to 1985 at Auckland University as a programming teaching aid, and for some internal projects. Originally written to run on a Burroughs Corporation B6700 Main frame in Fortran
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
IV, subsequently rewritten in SMALL and ported to a DEC PDP-10
PDP-10
The PDP-10 was a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from the late 1960s on; the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor model 10". The first model was delivered in 1966...
Architecture (on the Operating System
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
TOPS-10
TOPS-10
The TOPS-10 System was a computer operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation for the PDP-10 mainframe computer launched in 1967...
) and IBM S360 Architecture (on the Operating System VM/CMS
Conversational Monitor System
The Conversational Monitor System is a relatively simple interactive computing single-user operating system.* CMS is part of IBM's VM family, which runs on IBM mainframe computers...
).
About 1985, SMALL had some object-oriented
Object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,...
features added to handle structures (that were missing from the early language), and to formalise file manipulation operations.