PILOT: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:34, 30 December 2014

Description

PILOT or Programmed Instruction, Learning, or Teaching is a fairly simple imperative programming language intended to be easy to use and in particular to teach newbies and children the basics of programming. A predecessor to Logo, PILOT is tiny and could be efficiently implemented on early microprocessors, in the very early days of personal computers in the mid 70's it fought with Pascal, Basic, FOCAL and to a lesser degree FORTH as the language of choice for microcomputers, but for a short while Microsoft hedged it bets by having FOCAL and PILOT tools available as well as Basic. In the end Basic won the day mostly since the first four micro-computers designs that sold in any quantity either had Basic built in, or available at a low cost.

PILOT got something of a second life in the early 80's as an educational language, primarily in the USA, UK and France running on 8 bit 6502 computers, mostly ATARI and Apple II but also on the Commodore 8000 line in France. The 6502 versions evolved into Super PILOT, a system specifically developed for educational use with extensions for controlling external equipment such as slide projectors, tape recorders and laserdiscs. One of the factors was that it was very easy to create question and response programs in PILOT that suited the teaching of languages for instance down to a tee, by hooking it up to external hardware the student could continue at his own pace while getting full A/V instruction. Other PILOT implementations for educational use extended the language by adding the turtle graphics system from LOGO, this included "ATARI PILOT" and a couple of versions for the Commodore 64. Note that Super Pilot was not a product from one company but used for a number of extended implementations.

Note that it is very difficult to search for any information on the PILOT language, in addition to pilots in general and the Palm Pilot, there appear to exist at the least three operating systems named Pilot and at the least four programming languages that have pilot in the name, so your mileage may vary.

A list of OS/2 implementations of PILOT

RPilot - Open Source - Discontinued

Libraries and bindings

Editors with PILOT support

A list of DOS implementations of PILOT

RPilot - Open Source - Discontinued

A list of PILOT implementations that run under WinOS/2

A list of PILOT implementations that run under Java

A list of PILOT implementations in JavaScript

Publications

Tom Conlon: PILOT: The Language and How to Use it: Including Apple PILOT and Super PILOT Paperback – 1984 - ISBN: 0136762476 - Out of print.

Tutorials and other learning material

Links

USENET

Standards

IEEE Std 1154-1991. The only standard in existence and has since been withdrawn.

Pilot history

PILOT was developed by John Amsden Starkweather in 1968 when he was working as a psychology professor at the University of California, USA. It was partly based on an earlier language he had developed in 1962 called Computest that automated pupil testing and scoring.

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 PILOT or '''Programmed Instruction, Learning, or Teaching''' is a fairly simple imperative programming language intended to be easy to use and in particular to teach newbies and children the basics of programming. A predecessor to [[Logo]], PILOT is tiny and could be efficiently implemented on early microprocessors, in the very early days of personal computers in the mid 70's it fought with [[Pascal]], [[Basic]], [[FOCAL]] and to a lesser degree [[FORTH]] as the language of choice for microcomputers, but for a short while [[Microsoft]] hedged it bets by having FOCAL and PILOT tools available as well as Basic. In the end Basic won the day mostly since the first four micro-computers designs that sold in any quantity either had Basic built in, or available at a low cost.
-PILOT got something of a second life in the early 80's as an educational language, primarily in the USA, UK and France running on 8 bit 6502 computers, mostly ATARI and Apple II but also on the Commodore 8000 line in France. The 6502 versions evolved into '''Super PILOT''', a system specifically developed for educational use with extensions for controlling external equipment such as slide projectors, tape recorders and laserdiscs. One of the factors was that it was very easy to create question and response programs in PILOT that suited the teaching of languages for instance down to a tee, by hooking it up to external hardware the student could continue at his own pace while getting full A/V instruction. Other PILOT implementations for educational use extended the language by adding the turtle graphics system from LOGO, this included "ATARI PILOT" and a couple of versions for the Commodore 64.
+PILOT got something of a second life in the early 80's as an educational language, primarily in the USA, UK and France running on 8 bit 6502 computers, mostly ATARI and Apple II but also on the Commodore 8000 line in France. The 6502 versions evolved into '''Super PILOT''', a system specifically developed for educational use with extensions for controlling external equipment such as slide projectors, tape recorders and laserdiscs. One of the factors was that it was very easy to create question and response programs in PILOT that suited the teaching of languages for instance down to a tee, by hooking it up to external hardware the student could continue at his own pace while getting full A/V instruction. Other PILOT implementations for educational use extended the language by adding the turtle graphics system from LOGO, this included "ATARI PILOT" and a couple of versions for the Commodore 64. Note that Super Pilot was not a product from one company but used for a number of extended implementations.
 Note that it is very difficult to search for any information on the PILOT language, in addition to pilots in general and the Palm Pilot, there appear to exist at the least three operating systems named Pilot and at the least four programming languages that have pilot in the name, so your mileage may vary.