Knuth's tribute to his first love; a delightful article which I've read multiple times.
One thing that he wrote in this 1986 article about the 1950s has remained true for several decades since:
> During my student days I had never heard of the 701, and this, I think, leads to an important point: The IBM 650 was the first computer to be manufactured in really large quantities. Therefore the number of people in the world who knew about programming increased by an order of magnitude. Most of the world’s programmers at that particular time knew only about the 650, and were unaware of the already extensive history of computer developments in other countries and on other machines. We can still see this phenomenon occurring today, as the number of programmers continues to grow rapidly.
(BTW I wish someone would write an IBM 650 emulator on which we could try out the programs like his "Number Perverter Demonstration Card" in the appendix. Some of Knuth's early programs are also preserved and it would be wonderful to see them running.)
Thank you! The first one says it has been tested with “Case Institute SuperSoap” (which was the compiler/assembler that Knuth and his college friends worked on), so there's hope!
I can't figure out how to use it though :-) If anyone succeeds in running the (very short) “number perverter” program, and turning “0123456789” into “9876543210” I'd love to know.
(The last two I'm not sure how far along they are.)
One thing that he wrote in this 1986 article about the 1950s has remained true for several decades since:
> During my student days I had never heard of the 701, and this, I think, leads to an important point: The IBM 650 was the first computer to be manufactured in really large quantities. Therefore the number of people in the world who knew about programming increased by an order of magnitude. Most of the world’s programmers at that particular time knew only about the 650, and were unaware of the already extensive history of computer developments in other countries and on other machines. We can still see this phenomenon occurring today, as the number of programmers continues to grow rapidly.
(BTW I wish someone would write an IBM 650 emulator on which we could try out the programs like his "Number Perverter Demonstration Card" in the appendix. Some of Knuth's early programs are also preserved and it would be wonderful to see them running.)