APL Graphpak ReceDDe¢ies --by Walt Niehoff, Graphpak co-author Vestal, New York RAPHPAKis an APL workspace provided with all oflBM's current APL2 products. It evolved from a local (IBM, Endicott, New York) tool for visualizing technical data to a robust set of visualization tools for presenting data of any kind. A chronology of its development is recalled here. Having written the recollections below, I had to come back and comment on why I did it. First, I noticed that as my dad got older he became more and more dominant of conversations with his storytelling. So, I probably inherited some strong storytelling genes. I'll confess that I enjoy it. (But I have not yet reached the point where I invent stories.) Second, I will feel forgiven if some souls out there read it and appreciate the perspective I tried to communicate here. APL Origins In the mid-1960s, Alan Jones and I were guinea pigs in an experiment to test the usability of a Fortran time-sharing implementation called TELTRAN, which executed on an IBM 1410. We got to edit, execute, and debug our programs on IBM 1050 terminals for a half hour each day at lunch time. It sold both
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