Alan Turing? Apocryphal?
Dear Quote Investigator: The best way to learn computer programming is by seeing examples, writing code, and executing programs. Trying to learn solely through a book is quite difficult. This viewpoint has been credited to the pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing.
I am uncertain about this attribution because Turing died in 1954, and early computer languages like Fortran and Cobol were created after this date. Would you please explore this topic?
Quote Investigator: When Alan Turing was at the University of Manchester in England in 1951 he wrote the first manual for programmers which he titled “Programmers’ Handbook for Manchester Electronic Computer Mark II”. Digital scans of all the pages of the manual are available at the website of “The Turing Archive for the History of Computing”.[1]Website: The Turing Archive for the History of Computing, Director of the Turing Archive: Jack Copeland (Professor in Arts at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand), Website description: Scans of … Continue reading
A section titled “Programming Principles” begins with the following statements. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:[2]Website: The Turing Archive for the History of Computing, Document title: Programmers’ Handbook for Manchester Electronic Computer Mark II, Document author: Alan Turing, Date on document: undated, … Continue reading
Programming is a skill best acquired by practice and example rather than from books. The remarks given here are therefore quite inadequate.
If it is desired to give a definition of programming, one might say that it is an activity by which a digital computer is made to do a man’s will, by expressing this will suitably on punched tapes, or whatever other input medium is accepted by the machine. This is normally achieved by working up from relatively simple requirements to more complex ones.
In 1951 the computer at the University of Manchester was programmed directly using machine code. High-level programming languages like Fortran and Cobol were created later in the 1950s.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
References
↑1 | Website: The Turing Archive for the History of Computing, Director of the Turing Archive: Jack Copeland (Professor in Arts at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand), Website description: Scans of documents concerning U.K. computing pioneer Alan Turing. (Accessed alanturing.net on March 11, 2022) link |
---|---|
↑2 | Website: The Turing Archive for the History of Computing, Document title: Programmers’ Handbook for Manchester Electronic Computer Mark II, Document author: Alan Turing, Date on document: undated, Website description: The Turing Archive for the History of Computing. (Accessed alanturing.net on March 11, 2022) link |