Computer programming as an art

Abstract

When Communications of the ACM began publication in 1959, the members of ACM's Editorial Board made the following remark as they described the purposes of ACM's periodicals [2]: “If computer programming is to become an important part of computer research and development, a transition of programming from an art to a disciplined science must be effected.” Such a goal has been a continually recurring theme during the ensuing years; for example, we read in 1970 of the “first steps toward transforming the art of programming into a science” [26]. Meanwhile we have actually succeeded in making our discipline a science, and in a remarkably simple way: merely by deciding to call it “computer science.”