CORC

CORC (after CORnell Compiler), was a simple computer language developed at Cornell University in 1962 to serve lay users, namely, for students to use to solve math problems. Its developers, industrial engineering professors Richard Conway and William Maxwell and mathematics professor Robert J. Walker, sought to create a diagnostic compiler in PL/I which could both expose math and engineering students to computing and remove the burden of mechanical problem-solving from their professors.

CORC was designed with ease of use in mind. In contrast to the BASIC programming language under contemporaneous development at Dartmouth College, it used English language statements. Since programs were tediously input with punched cards, the compiler had a high tolerance for error, attempting to bypass or even correct problem sections of code. Students could submit a program by 5 PM which would be compiled or run overnight, with results available the next morning.

It was initially run on the Burroughs 220 and later extended to the Control Data Corporation CDC 1604. In 1966 it was superseded by CUPL, a batch compiler for teaching which ran on the IBM System/360.

An extension of CORC, the Cornell List Processor (CLP), was a list processing language used for simulation.

External links

• Resource page for cupl 1.6, providing binary and source code and background information about CUPL and CORC.

References

• "The Cornell Computing Language", R.W. Conway et al., CACM 6(6):317-320 (Jun 1963) Sammet 1969, p. 294-296. [Sammet 1969, p. 461].
• Richard C. Lesser's Recollections: The Cornell Computing Center - the early years, 1953 to 1964.
• This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.