History

Guy Steele on Language Design

(via PLNews)
Thoughts on Language Design

Computers with multiple processors are becoming more and more common. We need programming languages that support the use of multiple threads of control. [...] In such a context, the organizing principles of structured programming may not always be appropriate. I'm not talking about avoiding goto. (Java has no goto statement.) I'm talking about sequencing, if-then-else, and loops.

FORTRAN 25th anniversary film online

FORTRAN 25th anniversary film, 1982, 12.5 minutes. Computer History Museum lot number X2843.2005, donated by Daniel N. Leeson. Windows Media Video (12.8 megabytes)

Another great resource from Paul McJones.

The video quality isn't great, but this is still very much worth your time. It's interesting to see the faces behind the history of our discipline.

I am not going to list all the ideas from the film that are worth discussing. Let me just note that several remarks at the begining show just how remarkable the notion of a programming language really is (or was, at the time).

The guys discussing Fortress will also find several of the comments made in the film interesting.

MIT CADR Source Snapshot Released

Via Lemonodor. More details can be found at Bill Clementson's Blog.

Link to files

Guido van Rossum: Building an Open Source Project and Community

A long (close to two hours) audio presentation about Python's history and philosophy.

LtU readers will find a lot to disagree with (especially in part 2), for instance when Guido discusses dynamic languages and typing. And yet, I think Guido tries to be reasonable, even though I disagree with some of his conclusions.

Be that as it may, this talk provides a useful summary of Python's history, and some idea about the workings of the Python community. Long time readers will remember that I think language communities play an important, yet under appreciated, role in language evolution and success.

The birth of the FORTRAN II subroutine

By comparing three versions of the memo (unsigned, but believed written by Irv Ziller) “Proposed Specifications for FORTRAN II for the 704″, dated August 28, September 25, and November 18, 1957, you can watch the design of the subroutine feature of FORTRAN II unfold.

Also: separate compilation.

Classic LISP books online

Two more classic Lisp books are now online at the Computer History Museum:

  • John McCarthy, Paul W. Abrahams, Daniel J. Edwards, Timothy P. Hart and Michael I. Levin. LISP 1.5 Programmer’s Manual. The M.I.T. Press, 1962, second edition. PDF
  • Berkeley and Bobrow, editors. The Programming Language LISP: Its Operation and Applications. Information International, Inc., March 1964 and The MIT Press, April 1966. PDF

Happy Birthday, PHP...

As Slashdot observes, PHP was born 10 years ago on June 8th 1995.

It's had its knockers, but it's running this site...

Richard Hamming - "You and Your Research"

During a discussion on the subject of passion in programming, David Bremner on #haskell pointed out Richard Hamming's 1986 talk You and Your Research. Here's a taste:

At Los Alamos I was brought in to run the computing machines which other people had got going, so those scientists and physicists could get back to business. I saw I was a stooge. I saw that although physically I was the same, they were different. And to put the thing bluntly, I was envious. I wanted to know why they were so different from me. I saw Feynman up close. I saw Fermi and Teller. I saw Oppenheimer. I saw Hans Bethe: he was my boss. I saw quite a few very capable people. I became very interested in the difference between those who do and those who might have done.

Hamming clearly describes both the difference between the two and how you can be one of those who do.

FORTRAN pilot project

(via Paul McJones)

The FORTRAN pilot project is an effort of the Museum's Software Collection Committee to develop expertise in the collection, preservation, and presentation of historic software. The specific goal of this project was to locate source code, design documents, and other materials concerning the original IBM 704 FORTRAN compiler. The justification for this particular goal is that FORTRAN was the first high-level programming language and the first high-quality optimizing compiler.

Quite a bit of interesting stuff to read here.

Online computer science archives

We've been talking about how good a lot of the stuff in computer science over the past 50 years or so has been. Here are links to some excellent free online archives that I've found out about.

Please let us know what good stuff you find in here, and if you know some other good free archives. There's a huge amount of good stuff tucked away waiting to be rediscovered on LtU.

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