TIMTOWTDI ’70

One of the earlier acknowledgements of the inevitability of TIMTOWTDI in programming:

In computing there is always more than one correct way of approaching a given problem. Generally a standard mathematical method for solution can be found, or a method developed. Programs using the same method can still be written in more than one correct way.
from Digital Equipment Corporation, PDP-8 Handbook Series: Programming Languages (May 1970), p.12-6

Admittedly, it’s talking about BASIC — and by BASIC, PDP-8 BASIC was very basic¹ indeed — but there’s always more than one correct way to implement a solution.


¹: no text string handling, variable names limited to two characters in [A-Z][0-9] format, IF…THEN can only take a line number as argument (as with Dartmouth BASIC), one statement per line, max 350 lines or so. I’d heard that DEC thought that BASIC was going to be a passing fad and that their own FOCAL language was going to “win”, so their BASIC offerings were deliberately given less attention than FOCAL. Hmm …

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