“The following true pattern of BANCStar code used to be from a production design”

The Wayback Machine – http://web.archive.org/web/20050313023432/http://www.geocities.com: 80/ResearchTriangle/Build of residing/2266/tarpit/bancstar.html

A indicate from the curator…

Joe Loughry, the authentic creator of this online page, not too long ago contacted me about this online page with some updates. In case you in a technique came unintentionally, the BANCStar chronicle is a rather zigzag one. Joe sent me this online page for the authentic Tarpit and I posted it; alternatively, the publishers of the program, a firm called Broadway and Seymour, took large exception to the existence of this online page and its much less-than-complimentary perspective in opposition to its product and sic’ed a attorney on me. Being a mere college pupil at the time, and having plenty much less of a backbone than I originate now, I backed down and removed the hyperlink (but did not delete the online page).

As I said, I’ve grown a backbone since then.

I will be able to even not create the error again of backing down over a free speech self-discipline; or not it is miles the one sizzling button in my political mindset. So with out additional ado, here is Joe Loughry’s BANCStar description, complete with his 2000 replace…

/Brian

I mediate the enviornment is ready to be launched to BANCStar.

The following true pattern of BANCStar source code used to be taken from a
production design. I’m not too stupefied about revealing a quantity of proprietary
recordsdata here, as absolute top about ten of us on this planet can be taught this
code:

8607,,,1
11547,15475,22002,22002
1316,1629,1,1649 
3001,1316,3,30078
11528,22052,22002,22002
9301,0,1528,1528
31568,10001,800,107
8560,,,1568
8550,210,,
3001,,,
3100,1316,3,30089
11547,15475,22002,22002
3001,1316,3,30089
3001,1317,3,10000
8400,,,
8550,700,801,
3001,,,
9301,0,522,522
3000,1284,3,10001
8500,,3,
8500,,5,
1547,,1,-2301

I mediate we had one thing appreciate 1,350 recordsdata of this code, most recordsdata a
few hundred traces long, though some were over 1,000 traces. The design ran
the retail branch operations of a predominant commercial bank within the early 1990s.

Attention-grabbing points of BANCStar incorporated:

• The absolute top correct characters in a BANCStar program are the digits 0 via
  9, comma, minus label, and carriage return. Blank traces are not allowed. If
  a “.” appears to be anyplace within the file, the compiler will rupture.
• Feedback are strictly prohibited.
• Control buildings on hand consist of the 3000
  (“conditional”), 3001 (“block conditional”), and 3101
(“reverse block conditional”), to boot to 8500 (“GOTO”)
  and 8550 (“mixture GOTO”).
• There might maybe be a exhausting restrict of 2000 variables + constants within the
  complete design. The rest to be displayed on mask or printed on a collection aside must
  be outlined as a fixed, thereby taking on half of this treasured home.
  As a consequence, most calculations are achieved with a block of twenty or so “working
  storage” variables, which are continuously reused. Everything within the
  design is global. Contemporary initiatives continuously started off with the
  programmer purchasing for a handful of working storage numbers that can even
  be “borrowed” long satisfactory to complete the calculation, then restored to
  their usual values ahead of the rightful owner seen that they were
  long past.
• Labels internal the code are absolute, so any time a brand new online page used to be added or
  removed, all downstream GOTOs needs to be stumbled on and retargeted.

Joe sent me the following replace on July 31, 2000. It says quite more about BANCStar and the firm that created it.

About a more small print I undergo in mind:

BANCStar in level of fact came with a “mask generator” that used to be supposed
to be extinct to create suggestions. But the 5.1c version of the
generator used to be so minute that experienced programmers soon began
to pry off the covers and modify at as soon as the intermediate code that
the fade-time module in level of fact executed.

After I arrived in Seattle in early 1990, I joined a crew of seven
programmers who by now mechanically wrote at as soon as in BancSTAR machine
language, entirely ignoring the mask generator. The first time
they confirmed me the language, I concept it used to be a joke. But internal a
few weeks I used to be reading and writing the code, with the attend of every
BancSTAR programmer’s approved instruments: a dot-matrix printer, heaps and
heaps of more than a few color highlighters, and a 3-ring binder called
the Suggested File, stuffed with printouts of the dozens of tables in
the design, and religiously updated anytime anyone changed one thing
of significance. (I wasn’t kidding about reusing storage; whereas you happen to
wanted a fixed integer 1000, and to boot you might maybe even fetch an arena where
anyone else had as soon as extinct that very same rate, you linked your code to
his and hoped it by no approach changed.)

We developed some in-home instruments for programming huge suggestions
in BancSTAR, and at one level tried to ardour Broadway & Seymour
in them, but I mediate they by no approach in level of fact believed us, that we were
writing at as soon as to their inner, low-degree, undocumented machine
code.

Joe Loughry

[email protected]

I are making an are trying to provide absolute top a few comments myself. The Tarpit appears to be primarily devoted to joke languages (though as I write I’m mulling over a ask to add an APL reference to the space). To these that write programming languages for vertical markets, let the above nastiness be a lesson to you: security via obscurity is unfriendly juju.

/Brian


31 July 2000

Click on here to scuttle aid to the Turing Tarpit.


Click on here to scuttle aid to my home online page.

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