Re: Polysemy in programming langs (was: Why does the meaning of words change?)

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 21:29:15 -0400, John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:

>Ph. D. scripsit:
>
>> Then there was the PDP-8, the first mini-computer IIRC,
>> introduced in the 1960s. The only way to store the value
>> of the accumulator into memory was via the instruction
>> DCA, Deposit and Clear Accumulator. This copied the
>> value to memory then set the accumulator to zero.
>
>Yup.  The "accumulator" (AC), for younkers, was the main (and on some
>models the only) register, so-called because it was used to
>accumulate sums.  The PDP-8's instruction set was small enough
>that I still remember all of it:
>
> [snip]
Interestingly, wikipedia classifies the PDP-8 assembly language as a Turing
Tarpit, i.e. technically Turing-Complete but impractical. Which is exactly
the impression I got when reading the description. :)