Computer programming as an art
Donald E. Knuth · Communications of the ACM · 1974
When Communications of the ACM began publication in 1959, the members of ACM's Editorial Board made the following remark as they described the purposes of ACM's periodicals [2]: “If computer programming is to become an important part of computer research and development, a transition of programming from an art to a disciplined science must be effected.” Such a goal has been a continually recurring theme during the ensuing years; for example, we read in 1970 of the “first steps toward transforming the art of programming into a science” [26]. Meanwhile we have actually succeeded in making our discipline a science, and in a remarkably simple way: merely by deciding to call it “computer science.”