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The Early History of Programming Languages (1976) [pdf] (trailing-edge.com)
29 points by mpweiher on Aug 10, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments



Source for the Trabb Pardo–Knuth algorithm, "an early example of a programming chrestomathy".[1][2]

Kind of a boring algorithm to be named after oneself, I'd say :-).

1: https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Trabb_Pardo%E2%80%93Knuth_algor...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabb_Pardo%E2%80%93Knuth_algo...


I find these modern artifacts fascinating, and a great example of how poorly we communicate {in,about} code. Not that either Wikipedia or RC is a reliable source of quality, but there's plenty a critical eye could object to in both pages :-).

Also a great example of how pseudocode can muddy the waters: that given by WP (and quoted by RC) strongly suggests that the list must be reversed as a distinct step, which seems to have coloured some of the RC examples. Of course, in some languages doing so would be idiomatic .. while in others traversing the list in reverse would be, and in others constructing it tail-first. Same with mapping the function and then filtering for overflow, which seems at odds with the pseudocode.

Also, specifics of the output are entirely lost along the way.




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