PILOT

Description

PILOT or Programmed Instruction, Learning, or Teaching is a 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 compilers available as well as Basic. In the end Basic won the day mostly since the first four computers that sold in any quantity either had Basic built in, or available at a low cost.

A list of OS/2 implementations of PILOT

• RPilot - Open Source - Discontinued

A list of DOS implementations of PILOT

• RPilot - Open Source - Discontinued

Publications

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

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 The only standard in existence and has since been withdrawn.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.