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Forgive me if this is a bit morbid, but we are lucky as computer scientists and engineers to have a largely "living history" over the last century of innovation

Forgive me if this is a bit morbid, but we are lucky as computer scientists and engineers to have a largely "living history" over the last century of innovation. Documentation is great in some respects but we should try and go out of our way to interact and cherish the pioneers of early computing more before they pass on. What do I mean by "more"; when we have forums, mailgroups, IRC, conferences etc.? I guess more books, more interviews and more documentation. One thing I like to do with junior developers is when I see them using a terminal command that they just copy and pasted from stackoverflow, I try and coach them to read up about it on manpages or documentation online, so they can get a better feel of what the history was behind that tool.

qppo 7y ago
I hope you're right, most of what we know about Plato's teachings came from his students that took good notes. That said, I do have trouble finding the "history" of a particular technical idea. There's a lot of interesting things that are a certain way but haven't been documented about "why" because the author never thought to put them down. Indeed the most interesting things to posterity are the ones we don't even think about.
- OskarS 7y ago
  > I hope you're right, most of what we know about Plato's teachings came from his students that took good notes. You're thinking of Socrates, not Plato. Plato is the one of the few ancient writers where it's believed that basically his the entire body of work has been preserved. What we know of Plato's philosophy, we know from Plato directly. Socrates, however, did not write anything down: he was famously opposed to the concept of writing, thinking it induced forgetfulness. His philosophy is thus almost entirely known through his students, primarily through Plato. There are a few others (Xenophon was also Socrates' student and wrote about him), but Plato is by far the most significant.
thristian 7y ago
You may be interested in this 2016 talk about oral history in software engineering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaWFYm0kEw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaWFYm0kEw To oversimplify: we should write more interesting and historical comments in our codebases, write more blog posts and give more talks, and share more links to blog posts and talks other people have created.
- JdeBP 7y ago
  ... and put HISTORY sections in our manual pages? (-:
jjice 7y ago
I couldn't agree more. Growing up, my dad would tell me stories about 70s and 80s and 90s computing and it always fascinated me. I wouldn't consider myself a history buff, but when it comes to computers, I definitely am. More books on computing history would be great, the only one that comes to mind this very second is "Unix: A History and Memoir", which is fantastic. I've considered writing one myself as a little hobby project, but I'm not sure where to focus.

qppo 7y ago

I hope you're right, most of what we know about Plato's teachings came from his students that took good notes. That said, I do have trouble finding the "history" of a particular technical idea. There's a lot of interesting things that are a certain way but haven't been documented about "why" because the author never thought to put them down. Indeed the most interesting things to posterity are the ones we don't even think about.

OskarS 7y ago
> I hope you're right, most of what we know about Plato's teachings came from his students that took good notes. You're thinking of Socrates, not Plato. Plato is the one of the few ancient writers where it's believed that basically his the entire body of work has been preserved. What we know of Plato's philosophy, we know from Plato directly. Socrates, however, did not write anything down: he was famously opposed to the concept of writing, thinking it induced forgetfulness. His philosophy is thus almost entirely known through his students, primarily through Plato. There are a few others (Xenophon was also Socrates' student and wrote about him), but Plato is by far the most significant.

thristian 7y ago

You may be interested in this 2016 talk about oral history in software engineering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaWFYm0kEw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaWFYm0kEw To oversimplify: we should write more interesting and historical comments in our codebases, write more blog posts and give more talks, and share more links to blog posts and talks other people have created.

JdeBP 7y ago
... and put HISTORY sections in our manual pages? (-:

jjice 7y ago

I couldn't agree more. Growing up, my dad would tell me stories about 70s and 80s and 90s computing and it always fascinated me. I wouldn't consider myself a history buff, but when it comes to computers, I definitely am. More books on computing history would be great, the only one that comes to mind this very second is "Unix: A History and Memoir", which is fantastic. I've considered writing one myself as a little hobby project, but I'm not sure where to focus.