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ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast


hosts: Randy Kindig, Kay Savetz, Brad Arnold
email: antic@ataripodcast.com
twitter: @AtariPodcast
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Aug 2, 2017

Harry Stewart, Pilot and WSFN
 
Harry Stewart was a contractor for Atari from August 1978 through October 1983. He contributed to the operating system design and the manuals for the Atari 400 and 800; created the Atari implementation of the WSFN language (which was released in the first Atari Program Exchange catalog, summer 1981). He worked on Atari's PILOT programming language and the unreleased sequel, Super PILOT (also known as Summer Camp PILOT.)
 
Harry saved an enormous amount of material: source code, memos, notes, and more. He scanned some of it, I scanned some of it, and it's online at the Internet Archive at the AtariAge forums. 
 
This interview took place on June 29, 2017.
 
"You debugged in your head. It wasn't sitting at the machine single-stepping and doing breakpoints. If you had a problem, you thought it out. Why is this happening? ... Working on the hardware only as necessary."
 
Misc. scans from Harry
 
Extended WSFN in the summer 1981 APX catalog
 
Atari PILOT II, source codediscussion
 
Atari PILOT: source code, discussionInternal Specification, External Specification 
 
Extended WSFN manual, and draft version. Source code, discussion
 
WSFN: An Introduction