History and Philosophy of Programming
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
1 Oral History Interview with Brian Randell January 7, 2021 Via Zoom
Oral History Interview with Brian Randell January 7, 2021 Via Zoom Conducted by William Aspray Charles Babbage Institute 1 Abstract Brian Randell tells about his upbringing and his work at English Electric, IBM, and Newcastle University. The primary topic of the interview is his work in the history of computing. He discusses his discovery of the Irish computer pioneer Percy Ludgate, the preparation of his edited volume The Origins of Digital Computers, various lectures he has given on the history of computing, his PhD supervision of Martin Campbell-Kelly, the Computer History Museum, his contribution to the second edition of A Computer Perspective, and his involvement in making public the World War 2 Bletchley Park Colossus code- breaking machines, among other topics. This interview is part of a series of interviews on the early history of the history of computing. Keywords: English Electric, IBM, Newcastle University, Bletchley Park, Martin Campbell-Kelly, Computer History Museum, Jim Horning, Gwen Bell, Gordon Bell, Enigma machine, Curta (calculating device), Charles and Ray Eames, I. Bernard Cohen, Charles Babbage, Percy Ludgate. 2 Aspray: This is an interview on the 7th of January 2021 with Brian Randell. The interviewer is William Aspray. We’re doing this interview via Zoom. Brian, could you briefly talk about when and where you were born, a little bit about your growing up and your interests during that time, all the way through your formal education? Randell: Ok. I was born in 1936 in Cardiff, Wales. Went to school, high school, there. In retrospect, one of the things I missed out then was learning or being taught Welsh. -
Thomas Ströhlein's Endgame Tables: a 50Th Anniversary
Thomas Ströhlein's Endgame Tables: a 50th Anniversary Article Supplemental Material The Festschrift on the 40th Anniversary of the Munich Faculty of Informatics Haworth, G. (2020) Thomas Ströhlein's Endgame Tables: a 50th Anniversary. ICGA Journal, 42 (2-3). pp. 165-170. ISSN 1389-6911 doi: https://doi.org/10.3233/ICG-200151 Available at http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/90000/ It is advisable to refer to the publisher’s version if you intend to cite from the work. See Guidance on citing . Published version at: https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg200151 To link to this article DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/ICG-200151 Publisher: The International Computer Games Association All outputs in CentAUR are protected by Intellectual Property Rights law, including copyright law. Copyright and IPR is retained by the creators or other copyright holders. Terms and conditions for use of this material are defined in the End User Agreement . www.reading.ac.uk/centaur CentAUR Central Archive at the University of Reading Reading’s research outputs online 40 Jahre Informatik in Munchen:¨ 1967 – 2007 Festschrift Herausgegeben von Friedrich L. Bauer unter Mitwirkung von Helmut Angstl, Uwe Baumgarten, Rudolf Bayer, Hedwig Berghofer, Arndt Bode, Wilfried Brauer, Stephan Braun, Manfred Broy, Roland Bulirsch, Hans-Joachim Bungartz, Herbert Ehler, Jurgen¨ Eickel, Ursula Eschbach, Anton Gerold, Rupert Gnatz, Ulrich Guntzer,¨ Hellmuth Haag, Winfried Hahn (†), Heinz-Gerd Hegering, Ursula Hill-Samelson, Peter Hubwieser, Eike Jessen, Fred Kroger,¨ Hans Kuß, Klaus Lagally, Hans Langmaack, Heinrich Mayer, Ernst Mayr, Gerhard Muller,¨ Heinrich Noth,¨ Manfred Paul, Ulrich Peters, Hartmut Petzold, Walter Proebster, Bernd Radig, Angelika Reiser, Werner Rub,¨ Gerd Sapper, Gunther Schmidt, Fred B. -
The Advent of Recursion & Logic in Computer Science
The Advent of Recursion & Logic in Computer Science MSc Thesis (Afstudeerscriptie) written by Karel Van Oudheusden –alias Edgar G. Daylight (born October 21st, 1977 in Antwerpen, Belgium) under the supervision of Dr Gerard Alberts, and submitted to the Board of Examiners in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MSc in Logic at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Date of the public defense: Members of the Thesis Committee: November 17, 2009 Dr Gerard Alberts Prof Dr Krzysztof Apt Prof Dr Dick de Jongh Prof Dr Benedikt Löwe Dr Elizabeth de Mol Dr Leen Torenvliet 1 “We are reaching the stage of development where each new gener- ation of participants is unaware both of their overall technological ancestry and the history of the development of their speciality, and have no past to build upon.” J.A.N. Lee in 1996 [73, p.54] “To many of our colleagues, history is only the study of an irrele- vant past, with no redeeming modern value –a subject without useful scholarship.” J.A.N. Lee [73, p.55] “[E]ven when we can't know the answers, it is important to see the questions. They too form part of our understanding. If you cannot answer them now, you can alert future historians to them.” M.S. Mahoney [76, p.832] “Only do what only you can do.” E.W. Dijkstra [103, p.9] 2 Abstract The history of computer science can be viewed from a number of disciplinary perspectives, ranging from electrical engineering to linguistics. As stressed by the historian Michael Mahoney, different `communities of computing' had their own views towards what could be accomplished with a programmable comput- ing machine. -
Edsger W. Dijkstra: a Commemoration
Edsger W. Dijkstra: a Commemoration Krzysztof R. Apt1 and Tony Hoare2 (editors) 1 CWI, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and MIMUW, University of Warsaw, Poland 2 Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge and Microsoft Research Ltd, Cambridge, UK Abstract This article is a multiauthored portrait of Edsger Wybe Dijkstra that consists of testimo- nials written by several friends, colleagues, and students of his. It provides unique insights into his personality, working style and habits, and his influence on other computer scientists, as a researcher, teacher, and mentor. Contents Preface 3 Tony Hoare 4 Donald Knuth 9 Christian Lengauer 11 K. Mani Chandy 13 Eric C.R. Hehner 15 Mark Scheevel 17 Krzysztof R. Apt 18 arXiv:2104.03392v1 [cs.GL] 7 Apr 2021 Niklaus Wirth 20 Lex Bijlsma 23 Manfred Broy 24 David Gries 26 Ted Herman 28 Alain J. Martin 29 J Strother Moore 31 Vladimir Lifschitz 33 Wim H. Hesselink 34 1 Hamilton Richards 36 Ken Calvert 38 David Naumann 40 David Turner 42 J.R. Rao 44 Jayadev Misra 47 Rajeev Joshi 50 Maarten van Emden 52 Two Tuesday Afternoon Clubs 54 2 Preface Edsger Dijkstra was perhaps the best known, and certainly the most discussed, computer scientist of the seventies and eighties. We both knew Dijkstra |though each of us in different ways| and we both were aware that his influence on computer science was not limited to his pioneering software projects and research articles. He interacted with his colleagues by way of numerous discussions, extensive letter correspondence, and hundreds of so-called EWD reports that he used to send to a select group of researchers. -
The Roots of Software Engineering*
THE ROOTS OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING* Michael S. Mahoney Princeton University (CWI Quarterly 3,4(1990), 325-334) At the International Conference on the History of Computing held in Los Alamos in 1976, R.W. Hamming placed his proposed agenda in the title of his paper: "We Would Know What They Thought When They Did It."1 He pleaded for a history of computing that pursued the contextual development of ideas, rather than merely listing names, dates, and places of "firsts". Moreover, he exhorted historians to go beyond the documents to "informed speculation" about the results of undocumented practice. What people actually did and what they thought they were doing may well not be accurately reflected in what they wrote and what they said they were thinking. His own experience had taught him that. Historians of science recognize in Hamming's point what they learned from Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions some time ago, namely that the practice of science and the literature of science do not necessarily coincide. Paradigms (or, if you prefer with Kuhn, disciplinary matrices) direct not so much what scientists say as what they do. Hence, to determine the paradigms of past science historians must watch scientists at work practicing their science. We have to reconstruct what they thought from the evidence of what they did, and that work of reconstruction in the history of science has often involved a certain amount of speculation informed by historians' own experience of science. That is all the more the case in the history of technology, where up to the present century the inventor and engineer have \*-as Derek Price once put it\*- "thought with their fingertips", leaving the record of their thinking in the artefacts they have designed rather than in texts they have written. -
Early Life: 1924–1945
An interview with FRITZ BAUER Conducted by Ulf Hashagen on 21 and 26 July, 2004, at the Technische Universität München. Interview conducted by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, as part of grant # DE-FG02-01ER25547 awarded by the US Department of Energy. Transcript and original tapes donated to the Computer History Museum by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics © Computer History Museum Mountain View, California ABSTRACT: Professor Friedrich L. Bauer describes his career in physics, computing, and numerical analysis. Professor Bauer was born in Thaldorf, Germany near Kelheim. After his schooling in Thaldorf and Pfarrkirchen, he received his baccalaureate at the Albertinium, a boarding school in Munich. He then faced the draft into the German Army, serving first in the German labor service. After training in France and a deployment to the Eastern Front in Kursk, he was sent to officer's school. His reserve unit was captured in the Ruhr Valley in 1945 during the American advance. He returned to Pfarrkirchen in September 1945 and in spring of 1946 enrolled in mathematics and physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitäat, München. He studied mathematics with Oscar Perron and Heinrich Tietze and physics with Arnold Sommerfeld and Paul August Mann. He was offered a full assistantship with Fritz Bopp and finished his Ph.D. in 1951 writing on group representations in particle physics. He then joined a group in Munich led by a professor of mathematics Robert Sauer and the electrical engineer Hans Piloty, working with a colleague Klaus Samelson on the design of the PERM, a computer based in part on the Whirlwind concept. -
Oral History Interview with Friedrich L. Bauer
An Interview with FRIEDRICH L. BAUER OH 128 Conducted by William Aspray on 17 February 1987 Munich, West Germany Charles Babbage Institute The Center for the History of Information Processing University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Copyright, Charles Babbage Institute 1 Friedrich L. Bauer Interview 17 February 1987 Abstract Bauer briefly reviews his early life and education in Bavaria through his years in the German army during World War II. He discusses his education in mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Munich through the completion of his Ph.D. in 1952. He explains how he first came in contact with work on modern computers through a seminar in graduate school and how he and Klaus Samelson were led to join the PERM group in 1952. Work on the hardware design and on compilers is mentioned. Bauer then discusses the origins and design of the logic computer STANISLAUS, and his role in its development. The next section of the interview describes the European side of the development of ALGOL, including his work and that of Rutishauser, Samelson, and Bottenbrach. The interview concludes with a brief discussion of Bauer's work in numerical analysis in the 1950s and 1960s and his subsequent investigations of programming methodology. 2 FRIEDRICH L. BAUER INTERVIEW DATE: 17 February 1987 INTERVIEWER: William Aspray LOCATION: Deutsches Museum, Munich, West Germany ASPRAY: This is an interview on the 17th of February, 1987 at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. The interviewer is William Aspray of the Charles Babbage Institute. The interview subject is Dr. F. L. Bauer. Let's begin by having you discuss very briefly your early career in education, say up until World War II. -
A Purdue University Course in the History of Computing
Purdue University Purdue e-Pubs Department of Computer Science Technical Reports Department of Computer Science 1991 A Purdue University Course in the History of Computing Saul Rosen Report Number: 91-023 Rosen, Saul, "A Purdue University Course in the History of Computing" (1991). Department of Computer Science Technical Reports. Paper 872. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cstech/872 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. A PURDUE UNIVERSITY COURSE IN mE HISTORY OF COMPUTING Saul Rosen CSD-TR-91-023 Mrrch 1991 A Purdue University Course in the History of Computing Saul Rosen CSD-TR-91-023 March 1991 Abstract University COUISes in the history of computing are still quite rarc. This paper is a discussion of a one-semester course that I have taught during the past few years in the Department of Computer Sciences at Purdue University. The amount of material that could be included in such a course is overwhelming, and the literature in the subject has increased at a great rate in the past decade. A syllabus and list of major references are presented here as they are presented to the students. The course develops a few major themes, several of which arc discussed briefly in the paper. The coume has been an interesting and stimulating experience for me. and for some of the students who took the course. I do not foresee a rapid expansion in the number of uniVcCiities that will offer courses in the history of computing. -
A Static Analysis Framework for Security Properties in Mobile and Cryptographic Systems
A Static Analysis Framework for Security Properties in Mobile and Cryptographic Systems Benyamin Y. Y. Aziz, M.Sc. School of Computing, Dublin City University A thesis presented in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: Dr Geoff Hamilton September 2003 “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible” St. Francis of Assisi To Yowell, Olivia and Clotilde Declaration I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed: I.D. No.: Date: Acknowledgements I would like to thank all those people who were true sources of inspiration, knowledge, guidance and help to myself throughout the period of my doctoral research. In particular, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Geoff Hamilton, without whom this work would not have seen the light. I would also like to thank Dr. David Gray, with whom I had many informative conversations, and my colleagues, Thomas Hack and Fr´ed´ericOehl, for their advice and guidance. Finally, I would like to mention that the work of this thesis was partially funded by project IMPROVE (Enterprise Ireland Strategic Grant ST/2000/94). Benyamin Aziz Abstract We introduce a static analysis framework for detecting instances of security breaches in infinite mobile and cryptographic systems specified using the languages of the π-calculus and its cryptographic extension, the spi calculus. -
Die Gruncllehren Cler Mathematischen Wissenschaften
Die Gruncllehren cler mathematischen Wissenschaften in Einzeldarstellungen mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Anwendungsgebiete Band 135 Herausgegeben von J. L. Doob . E. Heinz· F. Hirzebruch . E. Hopf . H. Hopf W. Maak . S. Mac Lane • W. Magnus. D. Mumford M. M. Postnikov . F. K. Schmidt· D. S. Scott· K. Stein Geschiiftsfiihrende Herausgeber B. Eckmann und B. L. van der Waerden Handbook for Automatic Computation Edited by F. L. Bauer· A. S. Householder· F. W. J. Olver H. Rutishauser . K. Samelson· E. Stiefel Volume I . Part a Heinz Rutishauser Description of ALGOL 60 Springer-Verlag New York Inc. 1967 Prof. Dr. H. Rutishauser Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich Geschaftsfuhrende Herausgeber: Prof. Dr. B. Eckmann Eidgenossische Tecbnische Hocbscbule Zurich Prof. Dr. B. L. van der Waerden Matbematisches Institut der Universitat ZUrich Aile Rechte, insbesondere das der Obersetzung in fremde Spracben, vorbebalten Ohne ausdriickliche Genehmigung des Verlages ist es auch nicht gestattet, dieses Buch oder Teile daraus auf photomechaniscbem Wege (Photokopie, Mikrokopie) oder auf andere Art zu vervielfaltigen ISBN-13: 978-3-642-86936-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-86934-1 DOl: 10.1007/978-3-642-86934-1 © by Springer-Verlag Berlin· Heidelberg 1967 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1%7 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 67-13537 Titel-Nr. 5l1B Preface Automatic computing has undergone drastic changes since the pioneering days of the early Fifties, one of the most obvious being that today the majority of computer programs are no longer written in machine code but in some programming language like FORTRAN or ALGOL. However, as desirable as the time-saving achieved in this way may be, still a high proportion of the preparatory work must be attributed to activities such as error estimates, stability investigations and the like, and for these no programming aid whatsoever can be of help. -
A Practical Partial Evaluation Scheme for Multi-Paradigm Declarative Languages∗†
A Practical Partial Evaluation Scheme for Multi-Paradigm Declarative Languages∗y Elvira Albertx Michael Hanus{ Germ´anVidalx Abstract We present a practical partial evaluation scheme for multi-paradigm declarative languages combining features from functional, logic, and con- current programming. In contrast to previous approaches, we consider an intermediate representation for programs into which source programs can be automatically translated. The use of this simplified representation, together with the appropriate control issues, make our partial evaluation scheme practically applicable to modern multi-paradigm declarative lan- guages like Curry. An implementation of a partial evaluator for Curry programs has been undertaken. The partial evaluator allows the special- ization of programs containing higher-order functions, calls to external functions, concurrent constraints, etc. Our partial evaluation tool is inte- grated in the PAKCS programming environment for the language Curry as a source-to-source transformation on intermediate programs. The par- tial evaluator is written in Curry itself. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first purely declarative partial evaluator for a multi-paradigm functional logic language. 1 Introduction A partial evaluator is a program transformer which takes a program and part of its input data|the so-called static data|and tries to perform as many com- putations as possible with the given data. A partial evaluator returns a new, residual program|a specialized version of the original one|which hopefully runs more efficiently than the original program since those computations that depend only on the static data have been performed once and for all at partial evaluation time. Two main approaches exist when designing a partial evaluation ∗A preliminary version of this work appeared in the Proceedings of FLOPS 2001 [7]. -
TCM Report, Spring
Alan F. Shugart Contents BOARD OF DIRECTORS CONTRIBUTING MEMBERS Richard L. Sites Ronald G. Smart 1 John Willia m Poduska. Sr.. Chairman David Ahl. Mr. and Mrs. Rolland B. Arndt. Charles E. Sporck The Director's Letter Apollo Computer. Inc. Isaac L. Auerbach. Robert W. Bailey. Ph.D.. Ivan and Marcia Sutherland John Banning. Alan G. Bell. Gregory C .F. Del Thorndike and Steve Teicher Dr. G w e n Bell C. Gordon Bell Bettice. Alfred M. Bertocchi. Richard Billings. Erwin Tomash Encore Computer Corporation Allen H. Brady. Daniel S. Bricklin. Fred and Jean De Val pine 3 Dr. Gwen Bell Nancy Brooks. David A. Brown. Gordon S. Charles P Waite Howard Hathaway Aiken Brown, Lawrence C. Brown, Marshall D. Stephen L. Watson The Computer Museum Butler. Charles T. and Virginia G. Casale. Harvey W. Wiggins. Jr. The Life of a Computer Pioneer Danald Christiansen. Richard J. Clayton. William Wolfson Erich Bloch George Towne Clifford. Howard E. Cox. Jr .. G regory W. Welch National Science Foundation Henry J. Crouse. David N. Cutler. Joe Cychosz. 13 Harvey D. Cragon Gerald Davis and Francoise Szigetti. Clive B. CORPORATE MEMBERS University of Texas, Austin Dawson. F. de Bros, Bruce A. and Frances M. A Conversation Delagi. Jack Dennis. Nick de Wolf. L. John David Donaldson Doerr. James R. Donaldson. Philip H. Dorn. BENEfACTOR- SIO.OOO or more with the Hackers Ropes and Gray Gregory L. Duckworth, Ray Duncan, Thomas Apollo Computer. Inc: Eggers. Dan L. Eisner. Bob O. Evans. Robert Bank of America Foundation· 16 Robert Everett A. Farmer, Andrew D. Feit. Tse-yun Feng.