Dynamic Debugging Technique
Dynamic Debugging Technique is a series of debugger programs originally developed for Digital Equipment Corporation hardware, initially known as DEC Debugging Tape because it was distributed on paper tape. The name is a pun on the insecticide DDT.
The first version of DDT was developed at MIT for the PDP-1 computer in 1961. It was an adaptation of the pioneering interactive, symbolic debugger FLIT which had been developed for MIT's TX-0 computer in 1959. Newer versions of DDT on newer platforms continued to use the same name. After being ported to other vendor's platforms and changing media, the name was changed to the less DEC-centric version. Early versions of Digital Research's CP/M and CP/M-86 kept the DEC name DDT for their debugger, however, now meaning Dynamic Debugging Tool. The CP/M DDT was later superseded by the Symbolic Instruction Debugger in DR DOS and GEM.
In addition to its normal function as a debugger, DDT was also used as a top-level command [line interpreter|command shell] for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Incompatible Timesharing System operating system; on some more recent ITS systems, "PWORD"—which implements a restricted subset of DDT's functionality—is run first and is overlaid with DDT as soon as the user logs in. DDT could run and debug up to eight processes at a time, such as several sessions of Text [Editor and Corrector|TECO], and DDT could be run recursively - that is, some or all of those jobs could themselves be DDTs. These eight jobs were all given unique names, and the usual name for the original and top-most DDT was "HACTRN". Guy L. Steele wrote a filk poem parody of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," entitled The HACTRN.