In the beginning 🤔

"Machine code, with its absence of almost any form of redundancy, was soon identified as a needlessly risky interface between man and machine. 

"Partly in response to this recognition so-called high-level programming languages were developed, and, as time went by, we learned to a certain extent how to enhance the protection against silly mistakes. 

"It was a significant improvement that now many a silly mistake did result in an error message instead of in an erroneous answer. (And even this improvement wasn't universally appreciated: some people found error messages they couldn't ignore more annoying than wrong results, and, when judging the relative merits of programming languages, some still seem to equate the ease of programming with the ease of making undetected mistakes.) 

"The (abstract) machine corresponding to a programming language remained, however, a faithful slave, i.e. the nonsensible automaton perfectly capable of carrying out nonsensical instructions. 

"Programming remained the use of a formal symbolism and, as such, continued to require the care and accuracy required before.

"It may be illuminating to try to imagine what would have happened if, right from the start our native tongue would have been the only vehicle for the input into and the output from our information processing equipment."

 


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