Quine (computing) - History

History

The idea of self-reproducing programs first appeared in Paul Bratley and Jean Millo's article "Computer Recreations: Self-Reproducing Automata" in 1972. Bratley first became interested in self-reproducing programs after seeing the first known such program written in Atlas Autocode at Edinburgh in the 1960s by the University of Edinburgh lecturer and researcher Hamish Dewar. This program appears below:

%BEGIN !THIS IS A SELF-REPRODUCING PROGRAM %ROUTINESPEC R R PRINT SYMBOL(39) R PRINT SYMBOL(39) NEWLINE %CAPTION %END~ %CAPTION %ENDOFPROGRAM~ %ROUTINE R %PRINTTEXT ' %BEGIN !THIS IS A SELF-REPRODUCING PROGRAM %ROUTINESPEC R R PRINT SYMBOL(39) R PRINT SYMBOL(39) NEWLINE %CAPTION %END~ %CAPTION %ENDOFPROGRAM~ %ROUTINE R %PRINTTEXT ' %END %ENDOFPROGRAM

The name "quine" was coined by Douglas Hofstadter, in his popular science book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, in the honor of philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000), who made an extensive study of indirect self-reference, and in particular for the following paradox-producing expression, known as Quine's paradox:

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

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