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1. Generic term for a program that assists
in debugging other programs by showing individual machine
instructions in a readable symbolic form and letting the user
change them. In this sense the term DDT is now archaic, having
been widely displaced by `debugger' or names of individual
programs like adb, sdb, dbx, or gdb.
2. [ITS] Under MIT's fabled ITS operating system, DDT (running
under the alias HACTRN, a six-letterism for `Hack Translator') was
also used as the shell or top level command language used to
execute other programs. 3. Any one of several specific DDTs (sense
1) supported on early DEC hardware and CP/M. The PDP-10 Reference
Handbook (1969) contained a footnote on the first page of the
documentation for DDT that illuminates the origin of the term:
Historical footnote: DDT was developed at MIT for the PDP-1
computer in 1961. At that time DDT stood for "DEC Debugging
Tape". Since then, the idea of an on-line debugging program has
propagated throughout the computer industry. DDT programs are now
available for all DEC computers. Since media other than tape are
now frequently used, the more descriptive name "Dynamic Debugging
Technique" has been adopted, retaining the DDT abbreviation. Confusion
between DDT-10 and another well known pesticide,
dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane
(C14-H9-Cl5)
should be minimal since each attacks a
different, and apparently mutually exclusive, class of bugs.
(The `tape' referred to was, incidentally, not magnetic but paper.)
Sadly, this quotation was removed from later editions of the
handbook after the suits took over and DEC became much more
`businesslike'.
The history above is known to many old-time hackers. But there's
more: Peter Samson, compiler of the original TMRC lexicon,
reports that he named `DDT' after a similar tool on the TX-0
computer, the direct ancestor of the PDP-1 built at MIT's Lincoln
Lab in 1957. The debugger on that ground-breaking machine (the
first transistorized computer) rejoiced in the name FLIT
(FLexowriter Interrogation Tape).
