[gnufx]

To support the sibling: If we're talking history, the assumption in the early 80s was that software was shared, at least in the technical computing circles I lived in and to the extent it was portable enough. We were suspicious of people who kept code under wraps -- with good reason in some cases that dubiously reproduced data post hoc, which was an early lesson. Free Software per se was a reaction to that culture being eroded around rms earlier than I saw it, and it's basically what I've done since I started.

I'm not convinced about "black art" given, for instance, the Harwell library and later NAG, although they weren't free software. (I knew about Ian Grant's work as an undergraduate, though he didn't teach me.) Later I knew how to get code from Netlib by email before we had general trans-Atlantic network access.

I found Nick Higham has a soft spot for the undergraduate textbook we had, from rather earlier, Acton's Numerical Methods that Work.