Early Programming Books

[Gavin Scott]

A few years later, but Iverson's A Programming Language (1962) was
written before APL was actually implemented and is all about a
symbolic mathematical notation for expressing operations. From the
preface via Wikipedia:

"Applied mathematics is largely concerned with the design and analysis
of explicit procedures for calculating the exact or approximate values
of various functions. Such explicit procedures are called algorithms
or programs. Because an effective notation for the description of
programs exhibits considerable syntactic structure, it is called a
programming language."

So I would definitely include it in the category of books you're asking about.

On Sun, Jun 20, 2021 at 3:44 AM Paul Birkel via cctech
<cctech at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> I know of two early computer (in the stored program sense) programming
> books.
>
>
>
>     1951: Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer
> (Wilkes, Wheeler, & Gill)
>
>     1957: Digital Computer Programming (McCracken)
>
>
>
> What others were published prior to the McCracken text?
>
>
>
> Excluded are lecture compendia and symposia proceedings, such as:
>
>
>
>     1946: Moore School Lectures
>
>     1947: Proceedings of a Symposium on Large-Scale Digital Calculating
> Machinery
>
>     1951: Proceedings of a Second Symposium on Large-Scale Digital
> Calculating Machinery
>
>     1953: Faster Than Thought, A Symposium On Digital Computing Machines
>
>
>
> These were principally about designs for, and experience with, new hardware.
>
>
>
> I'm curious about texts specifically focused on the act of programming.
> Were there others prior to McCracken?
>
>
>
> paul
>
>
>