MOVE HOURLY-RATE IN PAYROLL-IN TO HOURLY-RATE IN PAYROLL-OUT. MOVE HOURS WORKED IN PAYROLLIN TO HOURS-WORKED IN PAYROLL-OUT. MULTIPLY HOURLY-RATE IN PAYROLLOUT BY HOURS-WORKED IN
PAYROLL-OUT GIVING PAY-CHECK. WRITE PAYROLL-OUT. GO TO NEXT RECORD.
FINISH-IT.
CLOSE MASTER-IN MASTER-OUT.
There are a couple of reasons I can think of, on why you are not likely to see any of the above languages gracing your ATARI computer. There is very little call, and even less need, for programs like COBOL or FORTRAN on such a small and inexpensive system. Now you might consider the $500-$ 1,000 that you spent on your system so far to be a lot of money. It is, but there are computer centers out there that spend that much in a month on electricity alone. By their standards, an ATARI computer system and anything that is remotely like it is a little toy. Luckily, you and I do not think this way and are having the time of our lives with these toys.
These corporate executives with their big machines have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on business and scientific software. We, on the other hand, just do not have this kind of cash to throw around. Even in a microcomputer environment, FORTRAN is selling for about $400 and COBOL costs twice that at $800. These items cost big bucks. No wonder they will not likely be found in any future catalog put out by ATARI.
You probably will not be able to use these big computer languages on your ATARI because they are just that, Big. Memory requirements run up to 48K of RAM (random access memory), which completely fills up an ATARI 800. And a model 400 is out of the race completely with its memory limit of 16K of RAM. The fact that FORTRAN and COBOL are disk based programs 'makes them even less attractive. This is no problem for those among us who have bought a disk drive or two, but that is maybe 10% of all ATARI owners. If it were possible to use cassette tape, it would take hours, even days, to get a program running. Indeed, there are far too many problems involved to call for the implementation of these languages at this time. Don't get me wrong. If someone should come out with either language in a small and inexpensive form, I will be one of the first to buy it. But I will not be caught holding my breath, waiting for that day.
A language in which programs can usually be written in minutes is BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). This language is implemented on just about every computer made today, large or small. BASIC as written for our ATARI computer is an interpreter. This means that the programs we run are kept in the computer's memory where BASIC analyzes them and performs the necessary actions. Its operation is usually quite slow compared to other languages, but it has the advantage of ease of program modification and is very easy to learn.
BASIC example:
10 REM ACCEPT 3 NUMBERS AND PRINT THE SUM
20 REM
30 INPUT A,B,C
40 LET S=A+B+C
50 PRINT S
60 END
Now, how does one go from super slow to lightning speed? The answer is to write your programs in machine language, the language of the computer. In this way, you can achieve the fastest execution time possible and make the best use of available memory resources. To attain this goal you must think like the machine thinks. If you can break down to the smallest detail what you want the computer to do and just how you want the computer to do it, you have the problem solved. Now, not too many of us can think on the level that our machines operate at. For example, who is going to remember that the instruction to jump to a subroutine is 32, or to store value in memory you use 141. There are about 150 such instructions, known as opcodes, in the 6502 instruction set (the 6502 microprocessor chip is the one used in all ATARI computers and Video Game systems). If you were to try to program something large, like Star Raiders in machine language, you probably would be put away in an asylum. Luckily for us, someone came up with a system to remember these instructions called MNEMONICS.
With mnemonics, machine language comes very easy. Instead of having to remember that number 32 is to jump to a subroutine, all we have to remember is JSR. And number 141, to store data is simply STA. This is indeed a marvelous system to work with. Great things have been done and can still be done with it. But there is one little problem. The computer hasn't the first clue as to what you are talking about. It doesn't understand JSR's and STA's. It can only understand the 32's and 14 1's. What we need is a program that the computer can understand; that will convert into its language what we understand. This program is called an ASSEMBLER. It is rumored to contain a text editor, an assembler, and a debug program. The Editor is used to create text files in the computer's memory that can be saved on either cassette or' disk. It will likely have the editing functions available in the BASIC cartridge. The Assembler will do the conversion from mnemonics to computer code for you. The Debugger is a program to keep you in control of a machine language program. You will be able to examine and modify registers and memory locations, and trace a programs execution.
The following programs retrieve two values from the computer's memory at locations 1 and 2, adds them and stores the answer in memory location 3. The first is written in machine code and the numbers