3 ms·

That's fine. But it still couldn't hurt people to actually learn some computing history.

pjc50 9y ago
Where would you suggest they start? (Serious question, I've no idea how you'd find this stuff as a curriculum rather than just cultural immersion)
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  I don't think there is a single starting place. It really depends on the context. As an example, we're talking about microservices, so one could start looking into things that people brought up, like the Unix Philosophy. The thing developers really need to constantly be aware of is this - if you think of it today, another developer has already thought of it 30 years ago. Go find out what he knows.
  - Intermernet 9y ago
    I remember my dad telling me that a "science history" class would be mostly useless from a practical standpoint as the study of science would include all of the really important bits of the history of science as a matter of course. This may be accurate when approaching physics, but CS is a very young field. Just reading Knuth can give you a fantastic window into what has been done before. Looking into the history of Bell labs and Xerox PARC can make you understand the reality of what you suggest. I'm not in any way suggesting that there's nothing new to invent in CS, but the current mindframe in many devs is that the state of the art is akin to quantum mechanics following Newtonian physics by a couple of decades. The current revolutions in CS are mostly capability based rather than concept based. The ideas are relatively old, but the technology has allowed them to come to fruition. I think it would be beneficial for all new CS practitioners to have access to a history of CS, as they would not just realise that the current trends aren't particularly new, but that there are a huge number of equally old ideas that are probably ready for prime time, but weren't feasible when first suggested.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      History and Philosophy of science is definitely a field of study: http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/ http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/ - it definitely doesn't come through from learning the subject in the normal manner, because that tends to present a "finalised" view of science that doesn't include any of the dead ends or lengthy mysteries. HPS for CS wouldn't be a whole graduate course, but would be a worthwhile module in a larger course.
      - pacaro 9y ago
        I'm pretty certain that I'm not the only Cambridge HPS graduate here. It would be interesting to see some of the thinking behind current approaches to HPS being applied to development teams, both as teams and as part of the larger community of developers
- JabavuAdams 9y ago
  The original Wiki: http://wiki.c2.com/ http://wiki.c2.com/
  - afpx 9y ago
    The wiki linked above was established in the mid 90s by a group of practitioners who were attempting to document much of the history of software development - best practices, gotchas, etc. It was a great reference then, capturing a lot of what was otherwise being discussed on newsgroups and mailing lists. It still probably has a lot of gems. Technically, it was the first 'wiki'. http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiHistory http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiHistory

Where would you suggest they start? (Serious question, I've no idea how you'd find this stuff as a curriculum rather than just cultural immersion)

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
I don't think there is a single starting place. It really depends on the context. As an example, we're talking about microservices, so one could start looking into things that people brought up, like the Unix Philosophy. The thing developers really need to constantly be aware of is this - if you think of it today, another developer has already thought of it 30 years ago. Go find out what he knows.
- Intermernet 9y ago
  I remember my dad telling me that a "science history" class would be mostly useless from a practical standpoint as the study of science would include all of the really important bits of the history of science as a matter of course. This may be accurate when approaching physics, but CS is a very young field. Just reading Knuth can give you a fantastic window into what has been done before. Looking into the history of Bell labs and Xerox PARC can make you understand the reality of what you suggest. I'm not in any way suggesting that there's nothing new to invent in CS, but the current mindframe in many devs is that the state of the art is akin to quantum mechanics following Newtonian physics by a couple of decades. The current revolutions in CS are mostly capability based rather than concept based. The ideas are relatively old, but the technology has allowed them to come to fruition. I think it would be beneficial for all new CS practitioners to have access to a history of CS, as they would not just realise that the current trends aren't particularly new, but that there are a huge number of equally old ideas that are probably ready for prime time, but weren't feasible when first suggested.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    History and Philosophy of science is definitely a field of study: http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/ http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/ - it definitely doesn't come through from learning the subject in the normal manner, because that tends to present a "finalised" view of science that doesn't include any of the dead ends or lengthy mysteries. HPS for CS wouldn't be a whole graduate course, but would be a worthwhile module in a larger course.
    - pacaro 9y ago
      I'm pretty certain that I'm not the only Cambridge HPS graduate here. It would be interesting to see some of the thinking behind current approaches to HPS being applied to development teams, both as teams and as part of the larger community of developers
JabavuAdams 9y ago
The original Wiki: http://wiki.c2.com/ http://wiki.c2.com/
- afpx 9y ago
  The wiki linked above was established in the mid 90s by a group of practitioners who were attempting to document much of the history of software development - best practices, gotchas, etc. It was a great reference then, capturing a lot of what was otherwise being discussed on newsgroups and mailing lists. It still probably has a lot of gems. Technically, it was the first 'wiki'. http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiHistory http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiHistory