Early Programming Books

[Paul Koning]

> On Jun 20, 2021, at 1:19 PM, Norman Jaffe via cctech <cctech at 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