to the frustration we feel at seeing the first results make nonsense, and the realization that at this rate it will be many months before we arrive at something useful, it is not surprising that many people give up the whole idea. This is a pity, because if they persevered a little longer, they would find that the dominance of frustration would eventually give way to a feeling of being in command. They might realize that much of the delay in obtaining useful results was due to their own lack of experience in telling the machine what they wanted and expect the machine to do it; they would see that much of the nonsense in the first answers arose from the machine interpreting literally what they had intended only as general guidance. These are frustrations that all computer users know and understand. So why should this brochure focus on them in particular? I see two reasons. One is that present-day computing is still largely a one-man operation with an immense potential for misuse. The vast majority of computer time goes to programs that correct abusive businesses and that are far removed from any that could be considered purely straightforward or directly useful. The use of high-speed computing machines has extended the range of programs that it is practical to undertake, but at the same time it has enormously increased the penalty for
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/system-analysis-and-programming-christopher-strachey/