Quote by Grace Murray Hopper, speaking at
I only know one person who was able to write a program in ink and have it run the first time. That was Dick Bloch. He drove nearly all of us crazy because he could do that. Since the Mark I was a relay and step counter machine, it was not too difficult to change the circuits. Every once in a while, Dick would get the idea of a new circuit that would make his problem run faster. He'd get together with one of the operators during the night and they would fix the circuit. The next morning my programs wouldn't run. It's much better to have machines that the programers cannot alter. Commander Aiken was a tough taskmaster. I was sitting at my desk one day, and he said, You're going to write a book. I said, I can't write a book. He said, You're in the Navy now. And so I wrote a book. I have it here with me. This is the Mark I manual. Howard Aiken always said that one day we would have computers that would fit in a shoe box. I don't t know how he knew that, but he did.
Summary
This quote highlights the remarkable programming skills of Dick Bloch and Commander Howard Aiken's stringent approach to machine control. Dick was capable of writing programs in ink that would run correctly the first time, often modifying circuits to improve efficiency. However, this caused frustration for other programmers like the author, whose programs would no longer function after these changes. Consequently, Aiken believed in creating machines that programmers couldn't alter. Additionally, the quote mentions Aiken's foresight about future technology, as he predicted that computers would one day shrink to the size of shoe boxes. The author also refers to their role in writing the Mark I manual, which demonstrates the impact of Aiken's influence.
Topics
Computers
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