Basic Instructional Program: System Documentation.
Abstract
The BASIC Instructional Program (BIP) is an interactive problem-solving laboratory that teaches elementary programming in the BASIC language. It was developed on the IMSSS Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences) PDP-10 resarcher computer facility in a specialized high-level lanuge called Sail (Resier, 1976), which is presently available only on PDP-10 computers. During the year starting in October 1976, BIP was rewritten in the programming language called MAINSAIL (MAchine-INdependent SAIL) being developed at the Standford University Medical Experimental (SUMEX) Computer Facility. MAINSAIL, as reflected in its name, provides capabilties similar to those in SAIL independely of the underlying computer system. It is designed to be powerful and efficient, with a high degree of portability on a broad class of computers. Thus, BIP was rewritten in MAINSAIL so that implementation on other (notably smaller) systems would be possible. BIP was written in eight separately-compiled models (ONOFF, BIP, PARSE, XERS, ERRDOK, TEACHR, VERFY, and MSRECS) that are brought into memory (by the MAINSAIL runtime system) during execution as needed. The following sections describe the workings of all those modules as well as the curriculum data structures and the information saved in student histories.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1978
- Accession Number
- ADA165937
Entities
People
- Mary L. Dageforde
Organizations
- Stanford University