The Birth of SiMPLE

- by -

Bob Bishop

Back when I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, there were no i-pods. There were no cell phones. And there were no personal computers. (Seems kind of hard to believe, huh?)

Then, one day, I was in the library and found a book about Fortran programming. (Fortran was a programming language that was used with punched cards on the big "main-frame" computers in those days). I read the book . . . and I was hooked! Three days later I went out and got a part-time job as a programmer in the university's Physics department! (That was the only way that they'd let me try running my own  programs on their computers.)

During the years that followed, I always maintained a fantasy of someday having my own little main-frame computer down in my basement so that I could write programs to my heart's content. (Impractical, but not impossible: In those days, a little IBM-1620 could have been had for about $50,000.)

Eventually (around the mid 1970s), the first "hobby computers" started appearing in the marketplace. One of those manufacturers was a small company called Apple Computer. And they made only one product... the Apple-1 computer. (Click the image of the Apple ad that you see to the right to view it full size.)

The original Apple-1 would probably not be thought of as being a "personal computer", at least not by today's  standards. Because you still had to go out and find your own case, power supply, keyboard, video display, and cassette tape recorder for loading/saving software. ("Floppy disks" and "mice" were still several years away in the future.) And the Apple-1 had absolutely no graphics and no color. All you could display were black & white text characters. But it did come with BASIC (a programming language somewhat similar to Fortran.) So, in 1976, I was finally able to fulfill my fantasy of owning my very own computer!

I played around with the Apple-1 for about a year and had fun writing programs for it (e.g., see "Apple Star Trek"). Then, in 1977, the Apple-][ computer was released. So I went back to Apple and "traded-in" my Apple-1 for an Apple-][.

The Apple-][ was a really cool machine! Not only did it come fully assembled (inside a case with a built-in power supply and keyboard), but it had the capability of displaying colored graphics! And the new "Applesoft BASIC" that came with it gave programmers easy access to the graphics mode.

Because it was the first "appliance computer", the popularity of the Apple-][ continued to grow for the next several years. Soon, "new comers" to the business (such as IBM and Microsoft) started to enter into the picture. And with them came the perception that "everybody should now have a computer", but "nobody should be required to know anything about how to program it." (I.e., "We [the software gurus] will do all your thinking for you. All you need to know is how to push your little mousie around!")

And so, programming languages started becoming more and more esoteric and difficult to use... until finally, even Apple no longer supplied an "Applesoft-like" programming language to purchasers of their computers. User-created software had become virtually extinct. :-(

Of course, those of us who still had our old Apple-][ computers could continue to have fun writing programs on them. But each new generation of computers that came out offered tempting new features (more memory, faster speeds, better graphics, etc.) But we couldn't implement any of those new features in our own programs, because "the powers that be" had decided not to supply us with any easy-to-use programming languages for their new machines!

I was starting to feel very frustrated....

In 1995, I decided to do something about this gap that had developed between "easy-to-use programming methods" vs. "new and improved hardware cabilities". So I started designing a new software development system that would be as easy to use as Applesoft BASIC had been, and yet powerful enough to allow users to implement all the new Windows features (such as playing sound files, using hires graphics in millions of colors, etc.) directly in their programs.

I called my new development system "SiMPLE" (short for: Simple Modular Programming Language & Environments)

After many months of work and careful planning, I finally discussed my design with Rich Whicker (another former Apple engineer). Then, over the next several years, the two of us eventually created SiMPLE.

SiMPLE is not (and was never intended to be) merely a "clone" of Applesoft BASIC. It was merely "inspired" by it. There are many features of Applesoft that I didn't like and which needed to be improved. For example, Applesoft was an interpreted language, and so it ran somewhat slowly (even for a 1MHZ processor). SiMPLE, on the other hand, compiles into an executable (.EXE) file. So it not only produces programs that run faster, but those programs can even run on computers that don't have SiMPLE installed.

Another difference between the two languages is in the use of line numbers. Applesoft required them; SiMPLE doesn't even use them. (Instead of typing program statements onto the black Apple screen, Simple uses a text editor.) Furthermore the "FOR-NEXT" loops in Applesoft have been replaced by "Do-Loop" instructions in SiMPLE. (But they function in much the same way).

However, aside from a few differences in their outward appearances, writing programs in SiMPLE has a similar "feel" to what one experiences when writing programs in Applesoft. For example, when using SiMPLE in command-line mode, a program is run by simply typing the word "RUN" on a black screen (just as was done on the Apple!)

And so we say: "If you liked Applesoft, you'll love SiMPLE!"

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