@inproceedings{gill_general_1954,
	address = {Washington, {D.C.}},
	title = {General Discussion at End of Thursday Afternoon Session},
	booktitle = {Symposium on Automatic Programming for Digital Computers, Office of Naval Research, Department of the Navy, Washington, {D.C.}, 13-14 May 1954},
	publisher = {{U.S.} Dept. of Commerce, Office of Technical Services},
	author = {Gill, Stanley},
	year = {1954},
	pages = {98}
}

Imperfect “translation” of natural language into pseudocode in the “human phase” of “automatic programming.” “We must bear in mind,” Gill 1954 argued, “that there will always be two phases in the preparation of a program for a computer: the human phase and an automatic phase. Automatic programming techniques are designed to reduce the human phase at the expense of the automatic phase” (98). The “human phase,” he explained, “consists of expressing the program in terms of a pseudocode. To reduce the work involved, we try to make the pseudocode as near as possible to the language with which the programmer is familiar” (98). Gill 1954 identified “two things which prevent us from eliminating the human phase altogether,” one of which he expressed by analogy to translation, the other which noted the limitations of data entry mechanisms and schemes relative to natural language writing systems. Distinguishing between a programmer’s “everyday language” (natural language) and the pseudocode in which the programmer composes a program, “[t]here is the basic limitation,” he observed, “that part of the everyday language of the programmer has only an intuitive meaning; not only cannot the translation process be programmed — it cannot even be stated rigidly” (98). “There is also,” he continued, “the technical limitation that, since the program must enter the automatic phase via some kind of typewriter, the pseudocode is limited by the symbols available on that typewriter” (98).