The Apple Calculator Language
An exploration of Jef Raskin's early Apple documents reveals a proposal for a 'calculator language' intended for the Macintosh. The article discusses Raskin's critical views on contemporary programming languages like BASIC and his aspirations for a more efficient alternative.
Why it matters
It provides historical insight into the design philosophy of early Apple computing and the evolution of programming language development.
While perusing Jef Raskin’s documents from the early days of Apple (1979 predominately), I came across a curious one: a “calculator” language that Jef proposed.
What’s particularly interesting is that it’s presented in the context of programming languages. Its specification doesn’t really describe a general purpose programming language – the title is accurate in that it is a calculator language. But in context it seems implied that Jef had aspirations of turning it into something bigger. Something that might have been the programming language for the Macintosh (which turned out, instead, to be Pascal).
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