Dennis Allison is a lecturer at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, a position he has held since 1976. Allison was a founding member of the People's Computer Company. Allison in 1975 wrote a specification for a

microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...

interpreter Interpreting is translation from a spoken or signed language into another language, usually in real time to facilitate live communication. It is distinguished from the translation of a written text, which can be more deliberative and make use o ...

for the BASIC programming language The ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) reprinted the Tiny Basic design notes from the January 1976 Tiny BASIC Journal. which became known as

Tiny Basic Tiny BASIC is a family of dialects of the BASIC programming language that can fit into 4 or fewer KBs of memory. Tiny BASIC was designed by Dennis Allison and the People's Computer Company (PCC) in response to the open letter published by Bi ...

. Allison was urged to create the standard by Bob Albrecht of the

Homebrew Computer Club The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California, which met from March 1975 to December 1986. The club had an influential role in the development of the microcomputer revolution and the rise of that aspec ...

who had seen BASIC on

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...

s and felt it would be the perfect match for new machines like the MITS Altair 8800, which had been released in January 1975. This design did not support text strings or

floating point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some base) multiplied by an integer power of that base. Numbers of this form ...

arithmetic, thus only using integer arithmetic. The goal was for the program to fit in 2 to 3

kilobyte The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for Computer data storage, digital information. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix ''kilo-, kilo'' as a multiplication factor of 1000 (103); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000&nbs ...

s of memory. Allison published his work in the People's Computer Company newsletter in 1975. The Tiny BASIC contents of the newsletter soon became ''

Dr. Dobb's Journal ''Dr. Dobb's Journal'' (often shortened to ''Dr. Dobb's'' or DDJ) was a monthly magazine published in the United States by UBM Technology Group, part of UBM. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers. When launched in 1976, DDJ was the fi ...

of Tiny BASIC'' with a subtitle of "Calisthenics & Orthodontia, Running Light Without Overbyte." By the middle of 1976, Tiny BASIC interpreters were available for the

Intel 8080 The Intel 8080 is Intel's second 8-bit computing, 8-bit microprocessor. Introduced in April 1974, the 8080 was an enhanced successor to the earlier Intel 8008 microprocessor, although without binary compatibility.'' Electronic News'' was a week ...

, the Motorola 6800 and

MOS Technology 6502 The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit microprocessor that was desi ...

processors. This was a forerunner of the free software community's collaborative development before the internet allowed easy transfer of files, and was an example of a free software project before the

free software movement The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for user (computing), software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets thes ...

. From 1989 to 2004 Allison and microprocessor architect John H. Wharton coordinated Stanford University's EE-380 Computer Systems Colloquium.Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
John Wharton, Stanford University

References

External links

Personal web page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Allison, Dennis Stanford University Department of Electrical Engineering faculty Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people)