"Why would you want more than machine language?"

John von Neumann, when he first heard about FORTRAN in 1954, was unimpressed and asked "why would you want more than machine language?" One of von Neumann's students at Princeton recalled that graduate students were being used to hand assemble programs into binary for their early machine. This student took time out to build an assembler, but when von Neumann found out about it he was very angry, saying that it was a waste of a valuable scientific computing instrument to use it to do clerical work.

>>2
Thanks for posting on my thread, man!
I was getting worried I would receive no replies.
But I remained optimistic till the end! Such a good little story, such a captivating title, there was no way it would go unnoticed!
I really appreciate your response, hopefully the first of many.
Let's get this going, fellas! This is going to be a great thread!