The Work of Writing Programs: Logic and Inscriptive Practice in the History of Computing

Abstract

This article explores the entanglement of logic and computing by focusing on the activity of writing. Although mathematical logic is sometimes cast as the immaterial spirit of the computer’s material body, the study of logic also takes place in the physical world through the manipulation of symbols on paper. Already in the 19th century, mathematical logic was understood to be related to mechanization, though not as the science behind an as-yet-uninvented technology. Rather, symbolic notations were seen as tools that opened possibilities but required new kinds of work. Turning to early electronic computing in the 1950s, I observe that researchers similarly relied on novel inscriptive techniques to mitigate labor. Finally, considering Charles Hamblin’s Reverse Polish Notation, I show how logic was a source of notational invention, emerging as a practical resource for the work of writing programs independently of its role as a plausible theoretical foundation for computer science.