Hopper, "Keynote Address" for HOPL I (1978)

@inproceedings{hopper_keynote_1978,
	address = {Los Angeles, CA},
	title = {Keynote {Address}},
	language = {English},
	booktitle = {History of {Programming} {Languages}},
	publisher = {Academic Press},
	author = {Hopper, Grace Murray},
	year = {1978},
	pages = {7--24}
}

[Incomplete: includes only remarks on Holberton’s Sort-Merge Generator]

Early work in “automatic coding”: Betty Holberton’s Sort-Merge Generator. The S-MG was “the first step to tell us that that we could actually use a computer to write programs” (9). It took a specification for data files and generated routines for sorting and merging. “[I]t contained, I think, what I would define as the first version of a virtual memory in that it made use of overlays automatically without being told to by the programmer. I think that meant a great deal to me. It meant that I could do these things automatically; that you could make a computer write a program” (9).