| Short Code | |
| Developer: | William F Schmitt, A. B. Tonik, J. R. Logan |
| Influenced: | Intermediate programming language, OMNIBAC Symbolic Assembler |
Short Code was one of the first higher-level languages developed for an electronic computer.[1] Unlike machine code, Short Code statements represented mathematic expressions rather than a machine instruction. Also known as an automatic programming, the source code was not compiled but executed through an interpreter to simplify the programming process; the execution time was much slower though.[2]
Short Code was proposed by John Mauchly in 1949 and originally known as Brief Code. William Schmitt implemented a version of Brief Code in 1949 for the BINAC computer, though it was never debugged and tested. The following year Schmitt implemented a new version of Brief Code for the UNIVAC I, where it was now known as Short Code (also Short Order Code). A revised version of Short Code was developed in 1952 for the Univac II by A. B. Tonik and J. R. Logan.[3]
While Short Code represented expressions, the representation itself was not direct and required a process of manual conversion. Elements of an expression were represented by two-character codes and then divided into 6-code groups in order to conform to the 12-byte words used by BINAC and Univac computers.[4] For example, the expression
was converted to Short Code by a sequence of substitutions and a final regrouping:
Along with basic arithmetic, Short Code allowed for branching and calls to a library of functions. The language was interpreted and ran about 50 times slower than machine code.[5]