Re: Early Programming Books

[Paul Koning via cctech]

> On Jun 20, 2021, at 1:19 PM, Norman Jaffe via cctech <cctech@classiccmp.org> 
> wrote:
> 
> Basically, pre-1960, there couldn't be a 'general book on programming', since 
> every system was a unique environment - the only languages that could even be 
> remotely considered to be common were ALGOL 60 and FORTRAN II... and they 
> were 'extended' by every manufacturer to provide, at least, some form of I/O 
> beyond line printers and punch card readers / punches or to support different 
> character sets. 

True, unless you were to set out to write a general course on programming that 
doesn't dig down to the level of any particular assembly language or machine 
architecture.  From a quick look, I think the 1957 course by Dekker, Dijkstra, 
and van Wijngaarden I mentioned in my previous note does just that.  And that 
explains the title, "Programming automatic calculating machines" (as opposed to 
the more common "Programming the xyzzy-42 machine").

        paul