Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

programming environment 387that formerly required programming, it seems there is stilla demand for programmers who can move the bar anotherstep higher. The profession continues to evolve without anysigns of impending extinction.Further ReadingBrooks, Frederick. The Mythical Man-Month, Anniversary Edition:Essays on Software Engineering. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley,1995.Ceruzzi, Paul. A History of Modern Computing. Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press, 1998.Henderson, Harry. Career Opportunities in Computers and Cyberspace.2nd ed. New York: Facts On File, 2004.Kohanski, Daniel. Moths in the Machine: The Power and Perils ofProgramming. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.Ullmann, Ellen. Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents.San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997.programming environmentThe first programmers used pencil and paper to sketch outa series of commands, or punched them directly on cardsfor input into the machine. But as more computer resourcesbecame available, it was a natural thought that programscould be used to help programmers create other programs.The availability of Teletype or early CRT terminals on timesharingsystems by the 1960s encouraged programmers towrite simple text editing programs that could be used tocreate the computer language source code file, which in turnwould be fed to the compiler to be turned into an executableprogram (see terminal and text editor). The assemblersand BASIC language implementations on the first personalcomputers also included simple editing facilities.More powerful programming editors soon evolved, particularlyin academic settings. One of the best known isEMACS, an editor that contains its own LISP-like languagethat can be used to write macros to automatically generateprogram elements (see LISP and macro). With the manyother utilities available in the UNIX operating system, programmerscould now be said to have a programming environment—aset of tools that can be used to write, compile,run, debug, and analyze programs.More tightly integrated programming environmentsalso appeared. The UCSD “p-system” brought together aprogram editor, compiler, and other tools for developingPascal programs. While this system was somewhat cumbersome,in the mid-1980s Borland International released (andsteadily improved) Turbo Pascal. This product offered whatbecame known as an “integrated development interface”or IDE. Using a single system of menus and windows, theAs the name suggests, Microsoft Visual Basic provides a visual programming environment in which the controls that make up a program’s userinterface can be placed on a form. Various properties (characteristics) of the controls can then be set, and program code is then written andattached to govern how the objects will behave.