Editing Interpreter (computing) (section)

== History==
Interpreters were used as early as 1952 to ease programming within the limitations of computers at the time (e.g. a shortage of program storage space, or no native support for floating point numbers). Interpreters were also used to translate between low-level machine languages, allowing code to be written for machines that were still under construction and tested on computers that already existed.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bennett |first1=J. M. |last2=Prinz |first2=D. G. |last3=Woods |first3=M. L. |title=Interpretative sub-routines |journal=Proceedings of the ACM National Conference, Toronto |date=1952}}</ref> The first interpreted high-level language was [[Lisp (programming language)|Lisp]]. Lisp was first implemented by [[Steve Russell (computer scientist)|Steve Russell]] on an [[IBM 704]] computer. Russell had read [[John McCarthy (computer scientist)|John McCarthy]]'s paper, "Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I", and realized (to McCarthy's surprise) that the Lisp ''eval'' function could be implemented in machine code.<ref>According to what reported by [[Paul Graham (computer programmer)|Paul Graham]] in ''[[Hackers & Painters]]'', p. 185, McCarthy said: "Steve Russell said, look, why don't I program this ''eval''..., and I said to him, ho, ho, you're confusing theory with practice, this ''eval'' is intended for reading, not for computing. But he went ahead and did it. That is, he compiled the ''eval'' in my paper into [[IBM 704]] machine code, fixing [[Software bug|bug]], and then advertised this as a Lisp interpreter, which it certainly was. So at that point Lisp had essentially the form that it has today..."</ref> The result was a working Lisp interpreter which could be used to run Lisp programs, or more properly, "evaluate Lisp expressions".

The development of editing interpreters was influenced by the need for interactive computing. In the 1960s, the introduction of time-sharing systems allowed multiple users to access a computer simultaneously, and editing interpreters became essential for managing and modifying code in real-time. The first editing interpreters were likely developed for mainframe computers, where they were used to create and modify programs on the fly. One of the earliest examples of an editing interpreter is the EDT (Editor and Debugger for the TECO) system, which was developed in the late 1960s for the PDP-1 computer. EDT allowed users to edit and debug programs using a combination of commands and macros, paving the way for modern text editors and interactive development environments.{{cn|date=October 2024}}