From: Steve Witham <sw@tiac.net>
_The Elements of Programming Style_, by Kernighan and Plauger, famously headed its sections with examples of bad style taken from other textbooks.
I'm not sure whether it was that book, or maybe one of these: _Software Tools_ by Kernighan,
_Software Tools_ is actually also by Kernighan and Plauger. From the first paragraph of the Preface: "These programs are complete, not just algorithms or outlines, and they work: all have been tested directly from the text, which is in machine-readable form." The previous page says that the book was typeset by the authors on a PDP 11/45 running Unix. I found all this very bracing in 1976. From: Gareth McCaughan <gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com>
"The practice of programming", by Kernighan and Pike, makes more or less that claim, but doesn't make a big fuss about it. I think I've seen it in at least one other book, but that may be memory error.
Btw my point isn't that testing a program is the same as checking a proof, but that K&P's was a way to convey a similar attitude in a book. --Steve