Talk:Edinburgh IMP

Dead Links
I added dead link annotations earlier. I just found a message from the administrator at Edinburgh Computer History Project that the site was hacked and as a result the DNS entry has been disabled and will be replaced. I plan to update the links once the site is back online. MediaMangler (talk) 16:51, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * DNS is back, but no content on site yet. --MediaMangler (talk) 14:10, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Most of the links are working again. I am attempting to determine if the ones that still fail can be fixed.  --MediaMangler (talk) 00:22, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Derivation of the name "Imp"
There was some misinformation at another site (HOPL) that the name Imp came from "IMProved Autocode". I have *never* heard this at Edinburgh, from when I first went there as an undergrad in 1976. Everyone I ever spoke to said it was from "Systems IMPlementation language" - and I remembered seeing this myself in an early booklet entitled "IMP(AA) Programming" but never did subsequently find a copy to confirm. However I recently came across this 1968 conference paper "File structure and data description in the IMP language" ( https://gtoal.com/imp77/reference-manual/Imp-in-1968.pdf ) where Alan Freeman states clearly that it comes from "IMP lementation language" and was created "for writing (operating) systems in". I hope this puts to rest the erroneous "IMProved Autocode" etymology. Whether any of this is of sufficient interest to add to the page I leave to some other editor; I just wanted to make a note of it somewhere to get the facts on the record. - Graham Toal (Edinburgh Computer History Project) 70.124.38.160 (talk) 17:22, 2 August 2023 (UTC)