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Looking for information on a programming language called WhatDoesItDo

Retrocomputing Asked by user2887859 on February 3, 2021

I am looking for information on a training language called "WhatDoesItDo". It was used in 1978 at Austin Community College on a Motorola 6800 CPU.

If anyone has any information, I would appreciate it very, very much.

2 Answers

A CP/M implementation can be found in the SIG/M archives, volume 28 as waduzit.com, waduzit.doc and waduzit.pas.

From the Pascal source:

{
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ PROGRAM TITLE:        What Does It Do?                +
+                                                       +
+ WRITTEN BY:           Larry Kheriaty, Computer Center +
+                       Western Washington Univ.        +
+                       Bellingham, Wa. 98225           +
+                       BYTE MAG, Sept 1978             +
+                                                       +
+ SUMMARY:                                              +
+ A minimal PILOT interpreter.  A sample of what can be +
+ done with the high level language Pascal. Commands    +
+ will be found in the file WADUZIT.DOC.                +

Answered by john_e on February 3, 2021

I am looking for information on a training language called "WhatDoesItDo".

It was called WADUZITDO

Well, for training purposes, you might check out the online-version at Waduzitdo.org. It hosts a faithful (*1) port to JavaScript (*2), even including a few quirks of the original 6800 version. It offers as well an online reference of all legal instructions.

It was used in 1978 at Austin Community College on a Motorola 6800 CPU.

Serious? Now that's a cool fact to know. Do you have any reference?

If anyone has any information,

As usual, the Esolang-Wiki got some information, including a link to the Archive.org copy for the original Byte article of September 1978 (p.166), showing the 6800 Assembly source.


*1 - Sans the editor. A text box is simply more convenient today.

*2 - The port was made on Christmas 2005 and contains some 'tricks' to ensure workings on different Browsers (anyone remember the Browser Wars? The early 2000s were a horror for web applications) and relies on certain workings for text output which seem no longer true (or maybe simply optimized away by modern JS engines).

Answered by Raffzahn on February 3, 2021

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