Autocode

For the assembly language used with the IBM 1400 series, see Autocoder.

Autocode is the name of a family of "simplified coding systems", later called programming languages, devised in the 1950s and 1960s for a series of digital computers at the Universities of Manchester, Cambridge and London. Autocode was a generic term; the autocodes for different machines were not necessarily closely related as are, for example, the different versions of the single language Fortran.

Today the term is used to refer to the family of early languages descended from the Manchester Mark 1 autocoder systems, which were generally similar. In the 1960s, the term autocoders was used more generically as to refer to any high-level programming language using a compiler.[1] Examples of languages referred to as autocodes are COBOL and Fortran.[2]

  1. ^ London, Keith (1968). "4, Programming". Introduction to Computers (1st ed.). London: Faber and Faber Limited. p. 184. SBN 571085938. The 'high' level programming languages are often called autocodes and the processor program, a compiler.
  2. ^ London, Keith (1968). "4, Programming". Introduction to Computers (1st ed.). London: Faber and Faber Limited. p. 186. SBN 571085938. Two high level programming languages which can be used here as examples to illustrate the structure and purpose of autocodes are COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) and FORTRAN (Formular Translation).