More appreciation.

diff --git a/doc/mad-manual.xml b/doc/mad-manual.xml
index f03218ac611081adaa23969b550e0fa1fc2d43b6..743e591b1594e60d67b1257afd72a0adb94ce9df 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/mad-manual.xml
+++ b/doc/mad-manual.xml
@@ -79,6 +79,23 @@ yet done in non-assembler languages. The fact that the if statement is
 called WHENEVER and the goto called TRANSFER is a mere cosmetic
 trivium by comparison.</para>
 
+<para>The expository style of the manual conveys as clearly as do the
+language features that at this date the infant discipline of computer
+science had yet to separate itself from applied mathematics.  All
+the impedimenta of mathematical notation are present not just in the
+formulas, but in the language syntax descriptions where script letters
+are used as metavariables.  The whole is written in the rather clotted
+prose one finds in mathematical papers.</para>
+
+<para>Certain phrasings in the manual suggest that the authors
+thought of flowcharts as the primary notation for programs, and
+considered MAD code a sort of hand-compiled derivative of it.  This
+made sense at the time; programming notations were clumsy and
+primitive, and the typical complexity of programs was very low.  
+By five years later (roughly three or four Moore's-Law doublings)
+flowcharting was going out of fashion, probably for the simple
+reasin that flowcharts were getting too large to draw and read!</para>
+
 <para>There are some significant respects in which MAD was actually
 rather advanced for its period.  The multiline WHENEVER statement
 anticipated the free-format syntax of ALGOL 60 and its descendants,
@@ -93,6 +110,7 @@ similar (though less powerful).  This entire family of languages
 became extinct in the 1970s, snuffed out like dinosaurs by the 
 meteoritic impact of time-shared computing and teletypewriter-like
 interactive terminals.</para>
+
 </sect1>
 
 <sect1><title>How This Implementation Differs From The Original MAD</title>