Spelunking CACM, vol. 3 (1960): Automatic Graders for Programming Classes

This one boggles my mind. In the October 1960 issue of Communications of the ACM, Jack Hollingsworth of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Computer Laboratory published a paper titled, "Automatic Graders for Programming Classes".

This was on an IBM 650 computer. The 650 has a drum for temporary storage, and input and output are via punched cards. The grader program itself functioned as an executive of sorts, loading a student's already-compiled program from a card deck, setting up input data, running the program, comparing the output to an expected value, and aborting by punching a card indicating the error if it doesn't match. The grader is remarkably sophisticated; it can handle multiple independent assignments in a single run, by using different card decks for the input and output expected values.

They used this grader in a class of over 80 programming students. The article doesn't say if any of the students were women, but RPI already had a handful of women students at the time, so it's possible. Two machine operators are mentioned by name in the acknowledgments, both women; it's likely that they had a very high degree of technical skill in operating the machine and possibly in programming it.

"In general only an eighth as much computer time is required when the grader is used as is required when each student is expected to run his own program, probably less than a third as much staff time, and considerably less student time." That was very important in the 1950s, as machine time was an expensive and prized commodity.

The writing of the paper is a little rough; there's not much in the way of introduction, it just dives straight into some of the details of using the program.  We do learn that the grader was first used fifteen months before the paper was written, so presumably in 1959, perhaps as early as 1958. Pseudocode is included.

Given that I still grade student programs by hand, I should probably take a lesson from some of the pioneers from before I was born, and learn to save myself some work!