An Introduction to Programming Languages
E. Humby · ITNOW · 1965
The trouble with computers is people. The entry to the age of robots is not slow because man is technically incompetent to design and build powerful computing engines, but because he is organisationally incompetent to exploit fully or fast enough those that have been produced. Computers have to be given their instructions in a rather special way and the man with the problem has to employ specialists, systems men and programmers, to help communicate with the machine. Technical advances are made at such a rate that these lines of communication are drawn thin. Programmers are being trained as fast as we are able, but there currently exists what could be called a programming gap. As in similar situations we search for automatic methods to make up for the shortage of specialists. When we examine the job of programming we find that it is in fact a kind of data processing and the appropriate machine to help should therefore be the computer itself. There are two approaches. We can extend the capabilities of the equipment to take over some of the programmer’s work, or we can write programs for writing programs.