The Shape of Code

For a long time now developer time has been a lot more expensive than computer time. The idea that developers should organize what they do, so as to maximize the efficiency of computer time rather than their own time, is considered to be an echo from a bygone age.

Until recently, I thought the transition from this bygone age, when computer time was considered more important than developer time, started in the late 1960s. Don’t ask me why I thought this, put it down to personal bias.

I was recently reading A Survey of Eniac Operations and Problems: 1946-1952, published in 1952, and what did I find:

“Early in 1948, R. F. Clippinger and some of his associates, in the course of coding the solution of …, were forced to adopt a different method of using the Eniac in order to fit their problem on the machine. …. The experience with this method (first discussed in reference 1), led J. von Neumann to suggest the use of a serial code for control of the Eniac. Such a code was devised and employed with the Eniac beginning in March 1948. Operation of the Eniac with this code was several times slower than either the original method of direct programming or the code for parallel operation. However, the resulting simplification of coding techniques and other advantages far outweighed this disadvantage.”

In other words, in 1948, the people using one of the few computers in the world, which clocked at 100KHz, considered developer time to be more important than computer time.