---
title: "The Education of a Computer"
authors:
  - "Grace Murray Hopper"
year: 1952
venue: "Proceedings of the ACM National Meeting"
arxiv: null
doi: "10.1145/609784.609798"
source: "https://doi.org/10.1145/609784.609798"
topics:
  - compilers
  - hopper
  - automatic-programming
  - a-0
seed_rank: 571
seed_batch: "foundations-greats-2026-08-13"
reviewed: "2026-08-13"
pool: "languages"
relevance_score: 9
lineage: foundations-of-computing
cites:
  - title: "The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer"
    url: "https://archive.org/details/programsforelect00wilk"
    year: 1951
    arxiv: null
    doi: null
see:
  - "572-the-preparation-of-programs-for-an-electronic-digital-comput"
---

# The Education of a Computer

## One-sentence takeaway

Hopper argues that a computer should be taught programmer intent through subroutine catalogs and compiling routines — the A-0 vision of automatic programming.

## Why it matters here

ano and the Broadside languages stack are compiler descendants of this demand: stop writing machine code; make the machine absorb the method.

## Key ideas

- A compiling routine selects and relocates library subroutines from a catalog, filling in arguments the programmer named.
- The "education" metaphor: the machine accumulates reusable methods rather than being re-instructed from zero each job.
- Practice is Remington Rand / UNIVAC A-0 and its successors, presented at the 1952 ACM national meeting.
- Information hiding starts here: the user names an operation, not its machine-code expansion.
- The paper is an agenda, not a compiler textbook; Fortran and ALGOL later industrialize the same idea.

## Caveats

## Links

- DOI: [10.1145/609784.609798](https://doi.org/10.1145/609784.609798)
- URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/609784.609798