Re: 10 Things All Technical Writers Should Do
Programming is found in all of nature -- anything that is serial uses the
concept --- chemical reactions, biochemical reactions, physical reactions,
music, recipes. At their base, they are all "programming."
Bonnie makes a good point. A lot of the terminology in data processing is borrowed from earlier technologies (not just data flow diagrams<g>).
A computer was, initially, a woman who computed values for ballistics tables, using a mechanical calculator and a written algorithm. When the first electronic machine was pressed into service to speed up the project for the war effort (WW II), it became the first electronic _computer._
Similarly, a programmer was an electromechanical device that ran on a clock and closed particular circuits at user-set times in a user-determined sequence. Programmers ran test equipment, washing machines, traffic signals--basically anything with timed cycles consisting of diverse actions. A person who told an electronic computer what operations to perform and in what sequence to perform them was thus a computer _programmer._
A propos of the we-used-chisels-and-stones thread that this is liable to launch, I offer this oldie but goodie: http://tinyurl.com/cdhw.
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