Draft for discussion and comment

1Prepared for a special issue of The Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, to appear. REVISED 09/20/03 Marc Nerlove 2003 1Programming Languages: A Short History for Economists Marc Nerlove Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics University of Maryland Tel: (301) 405-1388 Fax: (301) 314-9032 e-mail: mnerlove@arec.umd.edu http://www.arec.umd.edu/mnerlove/mnerlove.htm The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. "Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?" he asked. "Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on till you come to the end; then stop." Lewis Carol, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, XII The Encyclopedia Britannica [16] defines a computer programming language as "...any of various languages for expressing a set of detailed instructions for a digital computer. Such a language consists of characters and rules for combining them into symbols and words. 1 Research supported by the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station. I am indebted to my colleagues Hanan Samet and Marvin Zelkowitz, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland. Charles Renfro has made numerous detailed comments based on first-hand knowledge of the last 50 years programming and computation in econometrics. Browyn Hall set me straight on the origins of TSP. The usual disclaimer applies. This account is based mainly on my ...