Comment Re:Assembly programmer. (Score 4, Interesting) 336
If you want to get technical: the language was MACRO-11. Which is an example of an assembly language. I program in "C#", not in "compiler."
In the Digital world, the name "MACRO" stuck because there were very early assemblers for the PDP-1 that did not have macro capability. So "MACRO" was the name for the assembler that did. In subsequent machine generations, "the" assembler was usually called MACRO even though as far as I know there weren't any assemblers without macro capabilities.
And perhaps I should add: the reason that it's called assembly language is because of drum memory. The usage dates back AT LEAST to the IBM 650 and Symbolic Optimal Assembly Language (SOAP). "Assembly" was short for "optimal assembly." Each instruction contained within it the address of the next instruction--they weren't sequential--and "optimal assembly" was the process of calculating how long each instruction would take so that the next instruction could be placed at the right location on the drum that it would be almost under the head when the last instruction had completed. "Optimal assembly" was the memory placement aspect of it.
The symbolic optimal assembly program added to that the advanced capability of allowing programmers to refer to instruction codes by convenient, easy-to-remember mnemonics like UFA and STA, as well as the capability of giving your very own names to instruction locations.
For some reason, the category name got abbreviated to "assembler" rather than "symbol-" um... symbolizer? Symbolic? OK, maybe THAT reason... and it stuck, even after advanced computers like the IBM 704 started to have random-access memory.