From arizona!noao!asuvax!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ns-mx!pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu Fri Dec 15 12:09:07 MST 1989
Article 420 of alt.folklore.computers:
Path: arizona!noao!asuvax!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ns-mx!pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu
>From: jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Von Neumann quote
Message-ID: <273@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Date: 7 Dec 89 23:11:14 GMT
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I worked with Don Gillies at the Univeristy of Illinois before he died, and
he passed the following tale on to me.

Gillies was a student of Von Neumann, and as a typical overworked underpaid
grad student, much of his work involved hand translating algorithms into
machine code.  Don Gillies got tired of this and (on the sly) wrote a
program to help him with the work.  Today, we'd call such a program an
assembler.  When Von Neumann found out, he was furious, exclaiming something
like:

   "It is a waste of valuable resources to use a scientific computing
    instrument to perform mere clerical work!"

					Doug Jones
					jones@herky.cs.uiowa.edu