Maurice Wilkes

It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs.

Since 1954, the raw speed of computers, as measured by the time it takes to do an addition, increased by a factor of 10,000. That means an algorithm that once took 10 minutes to perform can now be done 15 times a second.

By June 1949 people had begun to realize that it was not so easy to get programs right as at one time appeared.