SOAP H(ID:6484/soa002)

• Python/edu-sig discussion posting In my first "hacking" project we actually forked, as had many others, a
  piece of open-source software.  It was the SOAP II Assembler for the IBM
  Model 650 Computer System.  Hudson, High, and Hamilton produced the SOAP H
  version by taking advantage of the fact that the source code and
  documentation for the assembler were printed in the back of the manual.  We
  did the usual thing: inspected the code and figured out ways to tighten it
  up enough so that we had some free memory in our ~10k machine to add the
  goodies we wanted.  My contribution was to build a linking loader for the
  assembled programs, based on what I had seen of the FORTRAN II BSS Loader.
  I recall not being very good about teamwork in this project, and I was
  always holding up the parade by being off doing stuff on my own, and slowly.
  
       One of the things I noticed is that programming skill is often learned by
  working from existing code.  It becomes important to have good examples.  At
  some point, one has developed a practice of refinement and adaptation that
  begins to show up as craftsmanship.  This is not a solitary activity, no
  matter how much we go through it individually.  And for it to work, we must
  be willing to submit our work to the adaptation and refinement of others.
  Sooner rather than later.  When I first met Donald Knuth, he talked about
  some of the most beautifully-crafted programs he had ever read. One program
  was one that I had used, the Bell Labs Interpreter for computational work on
  the IBM 650.