Barry Hooper, Programmer Shell Australia
I remember my LEO programming days. Such fun and so stimulating to see what you
have programmed do its job. That LEO was remarkable and its origins amazing. I was so
sorry at Shell to see the LEO go and an inferior computer put in I its place. Its only asset
was direct access to disks all else was quite lousy and so hard to work. Fancy needing
System Programmers just to keep it workable!
Follow up
Thanks for your information and particularly the “LEO Matters” documentation. Brings
back interesting memories. What a great computer LEO was. That Master Routine was
brilliant. And printing in the background too, IBM could not do that! Actually I always
felt we went backwards when Shell moved to IBM. But then it did have direct access with
its disks. The Operating System and file management facilities were unnecessarily
complicated and left a lot to be desired.
There were so many facilities in PL/1 that programmers were essentially each writing in
different languages. Bye Bye to decent maintenance and flexibility.