Editing Action! (programming language) (section)

===Micro-SPL===
While taking his postgraduate studies, Parker started working part-time at [[Xerox PARC]] working on [[printer driver]]s. He later moved to the [[Xerox Alto]] project where he wrote several games for the system.{{sfn|Parker|2015|loc=6:00}} His PhD was in [[natural language]] parsing and he had worked on compiler theory during his graduate work.{{sfn|Parker|2015|loc=6:30}}

[[Henry Baker (computer scientist)|Henry Baker]] and Parker released Micro-SPL in September 1979. Micro-SPL was intended to be used as a [[systems programming language]] on the [[Xerox Alto]] [[workstation computer]], which was normally programmed in [[BCPL]]. The Alto used a [[microcode]] system which the BCPL compiler output. Micro-SPL output the same format, allowing BCPL programs to call Micro-SPL programs.{{sfn|Baker|Parker|1979|p=1}}

Aside from differences in syntax, the main difference between Micro-SPL and BCPL, and the reason for its existence, was that Micro-SPL produced code that was many times faster than the native BCPL compiler. In general, Micro-SPL programs were expected to run about ten times as fast as BCPL, and about half as fast as good hand-written microcode. In comparison to microcode, they claimed it would take half as long to write and 10% of the time to debug it.{{sfn|Baker|Parker|1979|p=1}}