[GAD]

There are a lot of computer people here. Anyone ever use an OS called PICK? I'm amazed how many people I meet in the field who have. Here's the Wikipedia entry for the curious:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system

Oh, and it was invented by a guy named "Dick Pick". <snicker>...

I used to work for "The Ultimate Corp" who was a huge PICK vendor. Just wondering if anyone else has used PICK. I was actually one of the technical reviewers for the Ultimate PICK BASIC manual.

GAD

 

[Arainach]

Can't say I have. I've went through pretty much the full suite of modern OSes - Linux since 2.4.12 or so, Windows 3.1 through XP (used Vista just long enough to realize that I'll probably never install it on a personal machine), All of the various *BSDs, Solaris 9-10, Mac OS 9 and X, and even a brief experience with BeOS, but I can't say I've used PICK.

 

[grawk]

My wife did. A big MLM used it for their payment processing, and she was their tech support when I met her.

 

[craiglester]

I vaguely remember Pick/Basic being mentioned when i was doing comp science back in the late 80's, can't say I've ever heard of anyone using it though. Cobol's what I learnt mainly, alas :/

 

[episiarch]

Wow, this takes me back. I never did get a chance to use PICK, but I grew up back when you could read lots of editorials about how PICK programmer productivity beat the pants off the mainstream (which mostly meant mainframe) programmer productivity of the day.

 

[GAD]

I was a PICK programmer then went to the Ultimate Corp where I did support. I supported PICK on the Honeywell, DEC PDP-11 and DEC VAX systems. It was easily the best job I've ever had. If they hadn't gone under I'd probably still be there today.

PICK BASIC was an awesome language, made more interesting by the fact that I knew *everything* about the OS down to the bit level. The very OS itself was a relational database. It was really very cool. The problem really was that it never became a visual OS with visual apps. Windows crushed PICK to a large extent, as did Unix, but the real killer was networking. PICK used a mainframe topology with up to thousands of serial terminals.

Universe came close since it ran on Unix, and I still see Universe installs from time to time.

It was a far simpler time.

GAD

 

[Sinista]

Never heard of Pick...

 

[LawnGnome]

Good way to get out those nasty boogers out.

 

[ingwe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GAD /img/forum/go_quote.gif I was a PICK programmer then went to the Ultimate Corp where I did support. I supported PICK on the Honeywell, DEC PDP-11 and DEC VAX systems. It was easily the best job I've ever had. If they hadn't gone under I'd probably still be there today. PICK BASIC was an awesome language, made more interesting by the fact that I knew *everything* about the OS down to the bit level. The very OS itself was a relational database. It was really very cool. The problem really was that it never became a visual OS with visual apps. Windows crushed PICK to a large extent, as did Unix, but the real killer was networking. PICK used a mainframe topology with up to thousands of serial terminals. Universe came close since it ran on Unix, and I still see Universe installs from time to time. It was a far simpler time. GAD

Evidently before my time.

(And I'm older than you.)


I *know* you've seen this:
http://catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html



Anyone remember ZapD? Hint: proprietary language from about 20 years ago.

 

[ingwe]

double post, crikey...

 

[GAD]

That is AWESOME.

I firmly believe that one of the reasons I can smell computer issues in massively complex systems is because I was first taught to program on an IBM System 360/370 in machine code. We were taught closed number loops, how to add/sub/mult/div in binary/octal/hex, and how to program by addressing bits in memory directly.

Once we had a grasp of machine code, they let us use Assembler, and guess what - we LOVED it. Mnemonics? WAY COOL! When everyone else hated assembler, we loved it and got frustrated by COBOL/FORTRAN/JCL etc.

GAD

 

[ingwe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GAD /img/forum/go_quote.gif That is AWESOME. I firmly believe that one of the reasons I can smell computer issues in massively complex systems is because I was first taught to program on an IBM System 360/370 in machine code. We were taught closed number loops, how to add/sub/mult/div in binary/octal/hex, and how to program by addressing bits in memory directly. Once we had a grasp of machine code, they let us use Assembler, and guess what - we LOVED it. Mnemonics? WAY COOL! When everyone else hated assembler, we loved it and got frustrated by COBOL/FORTRAN/JCL etc. GAD

I hear you!

While I didn't lick the bare metal like you did

, my first significant programming language was IBM BAL. Significant meaning actually taking a class. First day the instructor talked about JCL shells and such. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about! Before that, I wrote a couple trivial BASIC programs. Talk about trial by fire. I got an A.

Then came 'C'...

After graduation, I programmed on a payment terminal platform that used a Unix-like operating system derived from Xenu. Xenu was/is an operating system developed at Purdue for teaching OS theory/application. I actually needed the Xenu text book to understand how the kernel worked. Yes, I needed to lick the kernel.

To debug, I had to locate each process in memory by using a memory map to dump raw bits and manually translate the c-source for the OS' data structures to the bits in the dump.

So, if a "terminal" died in production (or I was debugging during development and my DUT blew-up), iI performed a special resurrection technique and was able to dump the memory (core dump) for examination. I manually traced through each processes' stack--raw numbers still, and this was the endian type (big, little, I always forget) where I had to switch each byte's nibble around to read it properly--read it with my eyes that is--all manual.

So, for each address in the stack (as opposed to data, lol), I'd see if it was in the application space. If it was then maybe, I could figure out what that particular process was doing when the terminal crashed.

Insane stuff, but good for you--like caster oil.

Come to think of it, I *did* lick the metal.

 

[StevieDvd]

Yes.

Used Prime Systems years ago, moved over to Universe for quite a while and even now use jBase.

My company liked jBase so much we bought the jBase company!

MV databases rule!!

I still prefer infobasic over these new fangled coding languages

 

[GAD]

Nice!

I could still fix GFEs if I had to.

GAD

 

[StevieDvd]

You can download jbase for free if you want to keep your hand in. Though be prepared for lot's of puns with words beginning with 'j' - like the jEDI.