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and why there were so many of them is a crucial aspect of the history
of the programming professions. Automatic programming languages
were the fi rst and perhaps the most popular response to the burgeoning
software crisis of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In many ways the entire
history of computer programming—both social and technical—has been
defi ned by the search for a silver bullet capable of slaying what Frederick
Brooks famously referred to as the werewolf of “missed schedules, blown
budgets, and fl awed products.”
7
The most obvious solution to what was
often perceived to be a technical problem was, not surprisingly, the
development of better technology.
Automatic programming languages were an appealing solution to the
software crisis for a number of reasons. Computer manufacturers were
interested in making software development as straightforward and inex-
pensive as possible. After all, as an early introduction to programming
on the UNIVAC pointedly reminded its readers, “The sale and accep-
tance of these machines is, to some extent, related to the ease with which
they can be programmed. As a result, a great deal of research has been
done, or is being done, to make programming simpler and more under-
standable.”
8
Advertisements for early automatic programming systems
made outrageous and unsubstantiated claims about the ability of their
systems to simplify the programming process.
9
In many cases, they were
specifi cally marketed as a replacement for human programmers. Fred
Gruenberger noted this tendency as early as 1962 in a widely dissemi-
nated transcript of a RAND Symposium on Programming Languages:
“You know, I've never seen a hot dog language come out yet in the last
14 years—beginning with Mrs. Hopper's A-0 compiler . . . that didn't
have tied to it the claim in its brochure that this one will eliminate all
programmers. The last one we got was just three days ago from General
Electric (making the same claim for the G-WIZ compiler) that this one
will eliminate programmers. Managers can now do their own program-
ming; engineers can do their own programming, etc. As always, the claim
seems to be made that programmers are not needed anymore.”
10
Advertisements for these new automatic programming technologies,
which appeared in management-oriented publications such as
Business
Week
and the
Wall Street Journal
rather than
Datamation
or the
Communications of the ACM
, were clearly aimed at a pressing concern:
the rising costs associated with fi nding and recruiting talented program-
ming personnel. This perceived shortage of programmers was an issue
that loomed large in the minds of many industry observers. “First on
anyone's checklist of professional problems,” declared a
Datamation
