The Apollo Guidance Computer

https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/ForDummies.html




How did this strange verb/noun system get put into place? One of the original AGC developers, Ram\F3n Alonso, provides an explanation. Apparently, nobody had yet arrived at any kind of software requirements for the AGC's user interface when the desire arose within the Instrumentation Laboratory to set up a demo guidance-computer unit with which to impress visitors to the lab. Of course, this demo would have to do something, if it was going to be at all impressive, and to do something it would need some software. In short order, some of the coders threw together a demo program, inventing and using the verb/noun user-interface concept, but without any idea that the verb/noun concept would somehow survive into the flight software. As time passed, and more and more people became familiar with the demo, nobody got around to inventing an improvement for the user interface, so the coders simply built it into the flight software without any specific requirements to do so. Many objections to the verb/noun system were received by the developers, such as "it's not scientific", "it's not dignified", or even "astronauts won't understand it". Even though the coders of the demo hadn't seriously intended the verb/noun interface to be used in any permanent way, it became a kind of devilish game to counter these objections with arguments as to why the interface was really a good one. In the end, the coders won and the verbs and nouns stayed. Nevertheless, the following Shakespearean quote (from Henry IV) is embedded within the AGC source code: "It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear."