We are already starting to see automated programming moving out of the research lab and into the commercial realm, e.g. IBM's "FORTRAN Automatic Coding System", whose name is an abbreviation of "FORmula TRANslator". This is an enormous effort. John Backus, a longtime proponent of such "automatic programming" systems who is leading the project, reported in 1955 that in its first edition, in early 1956, "FORTRAN" is expected to include eight to ten thousand instructions. It will be distributed to all lessees of the IBM 704 high-speed electronic digital computer in 1957. Though many programmers are skeptical of the quality of programs produced by the so-called "compiler", experience has shown that it only takes 2-3 days to learn, and the programs output by "FORTRAN" are often better than those written by expert programmers!
One of the great improvements in the second edition of FORTRAN, FORTRAN II, is that an application program can be written not as the output of a single compilation, but of many separate compilations.
[The above is liberally quoted and reorganized from the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 6(1), 01984.]
One of the great improvements in the second edition of FORTRAN, FORTRAN II, is that an application program can be written not as the output of a single compilation, but of many separate compilations.
[The above is liberally quoted and reorganized from the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 6(1), 01984.]