Programming in Pick

Nuttzz

What you ever heard of a language called PICK? I met a sales chap who was trying to sell a product writing in PICK, I have never heard it before but he tells me its been around forever. Is he flogging a dead horse? Do colleges teach these language anymore?

seamus

Data/BASIC - Also known as Pick BASIC. A BASIC-like language with database capabilities, the main programming language on the Pick OS. "The Data/BASIC Language - A Data Processing Language for Non-Professional Programmers", P.C. Dressen, Proc SJCC 36, AFIPS (Spring 1970).

Never heard of it myself, and it seems kind of obscure and used by a hard core of enthusiasts, but I could be wrong.

Do a Google search on it to see what's relevant to what you're talking about.

BobHope

Any chance he meant PIC? Microchip Programmable ICs (www.microchip.com). They are programmed in assembly language. As each assembly language is different for each type of device he could be referring to PIC assembly...

Nuttzz

No Bob, PICK, www.rainingdata.com Seems big but I've never heard of it. Propellor head stuff?

str8_away

Have a look of this link.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~dhona/pick.html

It started in 1965. It seems to me the language is very close to Database.
I wounder what the code look like.
Got an impression it might be very close to Basic.

here is another link.
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/mbtpublish/p.html#p29

Kernel32

I came across it before in a payroll company in the states. They wanted to dump it because it was old and crappy and they couldn't find anyone to maintain it any more, thats probably the biggest problem, maintenance, who wants to touch that old code.

atheist

In the age of the Minicomputer, when vendors moved from proprietary to a more common operating system, they generally went with either Unix or Pick, and there was much rivalry early on.

I have come across it personally twice, at a TV Rental company and at an ambulance station. :eek: On the TV Rental company, I did not recognise the OS so tried dir, cat, ls... LS logged me in as supervisor! The XT286 they were using time and date defaulted to 1975 on startup! The ambulance station were using an OS from the 60's / 70's running apps from the 80's hosted under an OS from the 90's.

It is actually quite powerful. TCL on Linux and XWindwos has its roots here, originally designed to support dumb terminals from numerous vendors.

There are good commercial emulators that run under Linux / Unix and Windows. Aesthetically putting the database below the operating system is very efficient. It was common in various UK Councils once upon a time. It could be regarded as tried and trusted. :dunno: For those that know it, application development is rapid.