wylmars OP
Yes, BAL was the language we all used at the start of my career. It is a very thrifty language in its’ use of memory. It required coding discipline, unlike today’s bloated high-level languages.
Ah yes, Art Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and his very clever twist on the HAL moniker (i.e., H (i) A (b) L (m). I was sort like one of those primates throwing clubs ... more age dating!
Actually, Kubrick disputed the HAL-IBM connection theory and said HAL was simply the acronym for Heuristic and Algorithmic Language. If he had wished to attribute IBM somehow why didn’t he just name the devious computer something someone other than a cryptologist could discern. Something like say MBI-9000.
I started my career at age 16, using one of those clunky Friden desk calculators to crunch Lorenz transformation equations at Army Map Service. During lunchtime of course. 😀