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The Computer Boys Take OverComputers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise$
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The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise

Nathan L. Ensmenger

Print publication date: 2010

Print ISBN-13: 9780262050937

Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: August 2013

DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9780262050937.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM MIT PRESS SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright The MIT Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MITSO for personal use.date: 27 February 2021

Tower of Babel

Tower of Babel

Chapter:
(p.83) 4 Tower of Babel
Source:
The Computer Boys Take Over
Author(s):

Nathan Ensmenger

Publisher:
The MIT Press
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262050937.003.0004

This chapter examines the emergence of programming languages as a means of managing the complexity of the programming process. It traces the development of several of the most prominent automatic programming languages including FORTRAN and COBOL and evaluates their significance as potential solutions to the software crisis of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The analysis indicates that while programming languages reduced the amount of clerical work associated with programming, they did not eliminate certain types of errors and even introduced new ones.

Keywords:   programming languages, programming process, FORTRAN, COBOL, software crisis, clerical work, errors

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