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Wisdom from Computing's Past

lewiscampbell.tech · 435 words · saved by 1 readers

I don't think computing is a real field. It acts like a pop culture, it deals in fads, and it doesn't even know its own roots. And worse than that it does not know about the really good things that were done in the past. — Alan Kay Real field or not, computing is young. The world's first computer science qualification began in 1953 at Cambridge. The United States had no computer science department until the 1960's. We like to talk of 'engineering', but chemical engineering was alchemy in an earlier life, and I believe our field is no different. And so for the most part, we have two reactions to the past of computing. Either we love the retro aesthetic; admiring the machines of an earlier age, and feeling a nostalgia for the tech of our youth. Or we sneer at it; looking down on people with primitive hardware who "didn't know what we know now". Almost never do we think that they might know what we have now forgotten. I've been watching an old British TV series - The Computer Programme. M

Wisdom from Computing's Past 12 Nov 2023 Wisdom from Computing's Past Shake yourself out of this parochialism of time! — J.R.R. Tolkien I don't think computing is a real field. It acts like a pop culture, it deals in fads, and it doesn't even know its own roots. And worse than that it does not know about the really good things that were done in the past. — Alan Kay Real field or not, computing is young. The world's first computer science qualification began in 1953 at Cambridge. The United States had no computer science department until the 1960's. We like to talk of 'engineering', but chemica

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