JOSS

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JOSS

JOSS (an acronym for JOHNNIAC
JOHNNIAC

The JOHNNIAC was an early computer built by RAND that was based on the von Neumann architecture that had been pioneered on the IAS machine. It was named in honor of von Neumann, short for John v....
Open Shop System) was one of the very first interactive, time sharing programming languages.

JOSS I, developed by J. Clifford Shaw at RAND

Rand

Rand may refer to a number of places, people, organizations, and acronyms:...
was first implemented, in beta form, on the JOHNNIAC

JOHNNIAC

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Rand

Rand may refer to a number of places, people, organizations, and acronyms:...
was first implemented, in beta form, on the JOHNNIAC

JOHNNIAC

The JOHNNIAC was an early computer built by RAND that was based on the von Neumann architecture that had been pioneered on the IAS machine. It was named in honor of von Neumann, short for John v....
computer in May 1963. The full implementation was deployed in January 1964, supporting 5 terminals and the final version, JOSS In, supporting 10 terminals, was deployed in January 1965.

JOSS was written in a symbolic assembly language called EasyFox (E and F in the US military's phonetic alphabet of that time). EasyFox was also developed by Cliff Shaw.

JOSS was dubbed "The Helpful Assistant" and is renowned for its conversational user interface. Originally green/black typewriter ribbons were used in its terminals with green being used for user input and black for the computer's response. Any command that was not understood elicited the response "Eh?".

JOSS II, was developed by Charles L. Baker, Joseph W. Smith, Irwin D. Greenwald, and G. Edward Bryan for the PDP-6

PDP-6

The PDP-6 was a computer model developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in 1963. It was influential primarily as the prototype for the later PDP-10; the instruction sets of the two machines are almost identical....
computer between 1964 and February 1966.

Many variants of JOSS were developed and implemented on a variety of platforms. Some of these variants remained very similar to the original: TELCOMP

TELCOMP

TELCOMP was a programming language developed at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in about 1965 and in use until at least 1974.It was an interactive, conversational language based on JOSS, developed by BBN after Cliff Shaw from RAND visited the labs in 1964 as part of the NIH survey....
, FOCAL

Focal

Focal may refer to:*Focal , an Irish lexicographical website*FOCAL **FOCAL-69**Focal *Relating to focus...
, CAL

CAL programming language

CAL was a programming language and Integrated development environment designed and developed by Butler Lampson at University of California, Berkeley in 1967....
, CITRAN

CITRAN

CITRAN was a dialect of the JOSS programming language which was used at Caltech in the late 60s and early 70s.It was used on an experimental timesharing system which was interfaced through modified IBM Selectric typewriters....
, ISIS, PIL/I, JEAN (ICT 1900 series

ICT 1900

ICT 1900 is the name given to a series of mainframe computers released by International Computers and Tabulators in the 1960s....
); while others, such as MUMPS

MUMPS

MUMPS , or alternatively M, is a programming language created in the late 1960s, originally for use in the Health care. It was designed for the production of multi-user database-driven applications....
, developed in distinctive directions.

Sample program

1.1 Demand p,q. 1.2 Stop if q<0 or r(q,2)=0. 1.3 Set a=1. 1.4 Do part 2 while q>1 and a~=0. 1.5 Type a in form 3. 1.6 Stop.

2.1 Do part 20. 2.1 Do part 11 if p<0. 2.2 Do part 12 if p>=q. 2.3 Do part 13 if p=0. 2.4 Done if a=0. 2.5 Set p=p/4 while r(p,4)=0. 2.6 Do part 14 if r(p,2)=0. 2.7 Do part 20. 2.8 Set a=-a if r(p,4)=r(q,4)=3. 2.9 Set s=p, p=q, q=s. 2.95 Do part 20.

11.1 Set a=-a if r(q,4)=3. 11.2 Set p=|p|. 11.3 Do part 20.

12.1 Set p=r(p,q). 12.2 Do part 20.

13.1 Set a=0, p=1, q=1.

14.1 Set a=-a if r(q,8)=3 or r(q,8)=5. 14.2 Set p=p/2.

20.1 Type p, q in form 1 if a=1. 20.2 Type p, q in form 2 if a=-1.

Form 1: " L(%.0f,%.0f) =" Form 2: " -L(%.0f,%.0f) =" Form 3: " %.0f\n"

Note that this is not an original sample, but rather one from a modern simulator. There are some syntactic differences from the original JOSS language.