[russell]

Which made for hellishly long compile times. Core-rope memory was used because of the weight and volume savings. On Apollo every pound counted. If you look at the Wikipedia article you find a link to HAL/S which used to program the shuttle computers. A similar language (the same?) was used to program the Apollo computers and I believe the ground support computers. I do remember finding 3 punched cards per statement to be a bit bizarre. Yes, I was there at MIT Instrumentation Lab, but some of the details have become hazy. :-)

Edit: The compile times for core-rope memory were pretty long, so there were lots and lots of simulations. Going to core was an infrequent occurrence. The computers had a small amount of conventional core so that patches could be applied. Bug fixes half way to the moon were possible.