On Finding a Discarded Copy of "A guide to Algol Programming"

I recently found, and gratefully picked up, your discarded copy of "A Guide to Algol Programming" by Daniel McCracken. I used to own a copy, which played an important role in my life. I discarded it for the sensible reason that I no longer needed it. Now I can't resist owning something so much loaded with historical significance.

In the fall term of 1963 I was a third year student enrolled in Numerical Analysis. The newly appointed, flamboyant professor Egbert van Spiegel had managed to persuade the university to take measures to discard the electro-mechanical Marchant calculators that supported the lab for this course. From now on students would write programs in Algol to be run on the newly acquired Telefunken TR-4 computer, for which a whole wing of the building had just been gutted and rebuilt.

The problem was that no student could program and that nobody in the university had ever taught a course in programming. Someone was found to have a try. I was desperate: there had not been any course that I had found too hard, but here was one that was completely unintelligible. I stopped attending, without finding an alternative.

In January we were supposed to write programs for the Numerical Analysis lab. As I was in reserve for KLM, I made two flights a year to keep in practice. In December I made that year's second flight, to New York. From my room in the Edison Hotel on 47th Street I could see the McGraw-Hill building a few blocks to the South. I was in the habit of spending much of my time in New York in bookstores, and I had not tried the one on the ground floor of this building.

So far from home I had forgotten my Algol problem. But here I happened on "A Guide to Algol Programming" by Daniel McCracken. I was amazed to find that it seemed intelligible and had the presence of mind to buy it. That Christmas vacation in the attic guest room of my parents' house I spent several pleasant hours reading the book. The next term I did my Numerical Analysis lab by writing the required Algol programs. In 1966 I joined the Mathematical Centre, where Dijkstra had written the world's first Algol compiler. Although Dijkstra had left, it was still the hotbed of programming in the Netherlands.

Modified May 9, 2005

Home Page.