MAD (programming Language) - History

History

MAD is a variant of the International Algebraic Language (IAL). IAL is the original name for what eventually became ALGOL 58. While MAD was motivated by ALGOL 58, it does not resemble ALGOL 58 in any significant way.

Programs written in MAD included MAIL, RUNOFF, one of the first text processing systems, and several other utilities all under Compatible Time-Sharing System(CTSS). Work was done on a design for a MAD compiler for Multics, but it was never implemented.

The following is an interesting quote from An Interview with Brian Kernighan when he was asked "What hooked you on programming?":

I think that the most fun I had programming was a summer job at Project MAC at MIT in the summer of 1966, where I worked on a program that created a job tape for the brand new GE 645 in the earliest days of Multics. I was writing in MAD, which was much easier and more pleasant than the FORTRAN and COBOL that I had written earlier, and I was using CTSS, the first time-sharing system, which was infinitely easier and more pleasant than punch cards.

MAD was quite fast compared to some of the other compilers of its day. Because a number of people were interested in using the FORTRAN language and yet wanted to obtain the speed of the MAD compiler, a system called MADTRAN (written in MAD) was developed. MADTRAN was simply a translator from FORTRAN to MAD, which then produced machine code. MADTRAN was distributed through SHARE.

MAD/I has a syntactic structure similar to ALGOL 60 together with important features from the original MAD and from PL/I. MAD/I was designed as an extensible language. It was available for use under MTS and provided many new ideas which made their way into other languages, but MAD/I compilations were slow and MAD/I never extended itself into widespread use when compared to the original 7090 MAD.

GOM is essentially the 7090 MAD language modified and extended for the 360/370 architecture with some judicious tailoring to better fit current programming practices and problems. The MTS Message System was written in GOM.