A Brief History of the Pick Environment in Australia - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 150

512k RAM and an RS232 expansion card. Pick was an early implementer of code
reentrancy which enabled efficient working set management to be implemented [6].
Perhaps from the Pick perspective, two important events were the release of the
RISC engine as popularised by the Motorola M68x and IBM RS6x series chipsets and
the implementation of SCSI hard disk technology which allowed very fast disk ac-
cess. Pick was ported to the M68xx chipset and arrived in Australia as the Wicat
computer. This was one of many ports of the operating system.
2.3 Applications Development Environment
The applications development environment was implemented with a programming
language that was tightly integrated to the host operating system and the database
management system. The language syntax included very sophisticated string manipu-
lation capabilities and dynamic arrays that mimicked and implemented the database's
fundamental record structure, and internal conversion routines that allowed quite
advanced date and time manipulation.
Specialised syntax allowed rapid read/write access to any files that your security
level allowed. You could read an individual record or even fields within that record.
Locks could be applied on a record to prevent file integrity problems surfacing in a
multi-user environment to the degree where an optimistic locking strategy could be
programmed to avoid a race condition and ultimate deadlock occurring.
The language compiled to a p-code 3 that was remarkably efficient in a multi-user
environment and later into native chipset executable code which increased execution
speed markedly. It supported run-time relocation of subroutine code. This was keenly
exploited by programmers storing the names of candidate subroutines in files that
were read during program execution and loaded and run according to state conditions.
Recursion was also supported, although not greatly used as it (still) is a dangerous
tool in the hands of any novice programmer.
Most Pick developers were conscious of the power in the programming environ-
ment and took appropriate precautions. Nevertheless, as Dick Pick was once quoted
as saying that his system was replete with features he called “rope”. There was plenty
there with which to hang yourself [7].
The only problem with this development environment and language was its name -
Pick/BASIC. Most developers in the Pick community thought nothing of its name, but
were constantly embroiled in bickering about the language with non-Pick developers
who imagined it to be a form of Dartmouth Basic.
2.4 Query and Reporting Language Environment
The query language, called ACCESS, used against a given file would be driven by the
data dictionary associated with that file. In other words, using the student record ex-
ample earlier, you could readily query the student file for reports or information from
the target file name (student) and the list of fields (dictionary definitions) in which
you were interested. This is consistent with most modern query languages such as
SQL. Unlike modern day SQL, Pick ACCESS is strictly a reporting language.
3 P-Code. Pseudo code. A code that was not unlike assembler, but was interpreted at runtime by
the internal Pick OS engine, not a p-code compiler.