Error correction in CORC: the Cornell Computing Language

Abstract

CORC, the Cornell Computing Language, is an experimental compiler language developed at Cornell University. Although derived from FORTRAN and ALGOL, CORC has a radically simpler syntax than either of these, since it was designed to serve university students and faculty. Indeed, most of the users of CORC are "laymen programmers," who intermittently write small programs to solve scientific problems. Their programs contain many errors, as often chargeable to fundamental misunderstandings of the syntax as to "mechanical errors." A major objective of CORC is to reduce the volume of these errors. This objective has been achieved to the following extent: the average rate of re-runs for 4500 programs submitted during the fall semester of 1962 was less than 1.1 re-runs/program.