
In Memoriam: Jean E. Sammet 1928-2017 - sohkamyung
https://cacm.acm.org/news/217652-in-memoriam-jean-e-sammet-1928-2017/fulltext
======
sohkamyung
Does this part from the memoriam sound correct? That it needed her three days
to hand toggle a program on to a computer?

 _In early 1955, the company was working on a digital computer, the Sperry
Electronic Digital Automatic Computer (SPEEDAC) and asked Sammet to be their
programmer. Her first task was to write the basic loader for the SPEEDAC,
which was a 20-line program that took three days to toggle into the computer
by hand in binary._

This [1] appears to be the source for that.

[1] "Jean Sammet: Programming Language Contributor and Historian, and ACM
President" (PDF) [
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?reload=true&arnum...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=4802436)
]

~~~
rsynnott
That definitely sounds plausible for a very early computer, yep. Hand
toggling, in this case, meant literally loading code probably bit by bit (byte
by byte if you were lucky) with switches. Very error prone.

~~~
userbinator
It depends on what exactly those 20 lines contained, but it does sound a
little exaggerated to me --- perhaps 3 days to actually develop that program
(including learning about the machine and its architecture) seems more
reasonable.

The first microcomputers in the 70s also require bootstrapping from manually
entering code, and it usually didn't take days to do that:
[http://oldcomputers.net/altair-8800.html](http://oldcomputers.net/altair-8800.html)

(I was going to make a joke about APL, but then realised this was before its
invention...)

------
blah_blah
Her paper on history of PL is really good too (1972)
[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=361485&dl=ACM&coll=DL&CFID...](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=361485&dl=ACM&coll=DL&CFID=763601811&CFTOKEN=47408145)

I can't believe how little coverage her passing has caused.

------
kps
I highly recommend her 1969 book, _Programming Languages: History and
Fundamentals_.

~~~
smarks
Coincidentally, I just bought this book the week before last. Definitely an
interesting historical perspective. I've only skimmed it a bit, but one thing
that struck me was at the time (1969) the metasyntax for specifying the syntax
of a programming language wasn't a settled thing. BNF was relatively new, but
there were several alternatives in active use. She did point out the
possibility of ambiguities, but there was no mention of LR (Knuth 1965) or
LALR (DeRemer 1969) parsing. I guess parsing techniques were considered
research at the time, not settled practice.

------
rattray
Has anyone here ever used FORMAC or know anything about it?

~~~
tdeck
I was curious too. Here are two papers I found, but they are both paywalled:

Introduction to FORMAC (Sammet and Bond, 1964):
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4038202/](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4038202/)

The beginning and development of FORMAC (Sammet, 1993):
[https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=154766.155372](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=154766.155372)

From what I gathered reading a few snippets of other sources, FORMAC was one
of the first systems to do symbolic math, like an early Mathematica.

------
chwahoo
Another link of interest: [http://www.pl-enthusiast.net/2017/05/24/jean-
sammet-a-rememb...](http://www.pl-enthusiast.net/2017/05/24/jean-sammet-a-
remembrance/)

------
relyks
Through some google-fu, I was able to find some good material related to
FORMAC:

> This was the first step in extending the use of computers to do formal
> mathematics, as distinct from numerical mathematics. MAPLE and MATHEMATICA,
> which are discussed here, are the "children" of FORMAC. [1]

I was able to find some example code:
[https://gist.github.com/relyks/4e63e4fbe73e2a0ad9d681624eb96...](https://gist.github.com/relyks/4e63e4fbe73e2a0ad9d681624eb96bc7)
[2]

And another good quote from a paper:

> The basic concepts of FORMAC (FORmula MAnipulation Compiler) were first
> developed by Jean E. Sammet (assisted by Robert G. Tobey) at IBM’s Boston
> Advanced Programming Department in July 1962. I recognized that what was
> needed was a formal algebraic capability associated with an already existing
> numeric mathematical language; FORTRAN was the obvious choice. An internal
> memo describing the basic ideas was written on August 1, 1962, and a
> complete draft of language specifications was finished in December 1962;
> implementation design started shortly thereafter. The basic objective was to
> develop a practical system for performing formal mathematical manipulation
> on the IBM 7090194. Originally FORMAC was intended only as an experiment,
> and there was no plan to make it available outside of IBM. In April 1964 the
> first complete version was successfully running after extensive testing, and
> papers on it appeared in the literature.

...

FORMAC introduced and/or emphasized two major concepts the desirability of a
language for doing formula manipulation, rather than just a series of
routines, and the concept of extending an existing language to provide this
type of capability. Of the other two systems that appear to be in general use
in 1980 one, REDUCE, has more or less followed the FORMAC language philosophy
by adding capabilities to ALGOL, whereas MACSYMA has developed its own
language. Perhaps the most lasting value of FORMAC was its major role, along
with Sammet’s formation of the ACM Special Interest Group on Symbolic and
Algebraic Manipulation (SIGSAM), in getting this technical field started. [3]

[1]
[http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/28555/files/wp03-17.pdf](http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/28555/files/wp03-17.pdf)

[2]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20110927015538/http://hopl.murdoc...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110927015538/http://hopl.murdoch.edu.au/showlanguage.prx?exp=158&language=FORMAC)

[3]
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b77c/4a57b8cb314ff07744c3d3...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b77c/4a57b8cb314ff07744c3d3b33077c2a3618f.pdf)

Looks pretty similar to Matlab :)

------
SirLJ
Rip

