On 5/25/05, Bob Ammerman <rammerman@verizon.net> wrote:
> - Instructions were not executed sequentially. Rather each instruction
> contained the address of the next instruction to be executed. In effect,
> each instruction was a 'jump' instruction as well as its ordinary function.
> 
> - By carefully placing instructions around the drum you could time things so
> that the next instruction would be under the read head just as the previous
> instruction finished executing.
> 
> - Eventually some smart programmer realized that the computer itself could
> do the job of optimizing the placement of instructions and so was born SOAP,
> the Symbolic Optimal  Assembly Program.
> 
> - However, some 'real programmers' wouldn't use SOAP because they felt they
> could do a better job hand-optimizing the code.

ObStoryOfMel: http://www.drbbs.com/jsw/jargon/jargon_49.html

Bradley

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