October 1, 2010
©Information Disciplines, Inc.
These documents describe events in the computing field that took place more than about twenty-five years ago. Younger readers will be interested in explanations of how things got to be the way they are now. Older readers may enjoy a nostalgic reminiscence.
Some of these reminiscences are about technical issues—programming languages, machines, operating systems, etc. Others are about people or organizations. All of them rely on fading memories, so please let me know if you spot something that conflicts with your understanding.
—Conrad Weisert, cweisert@acm.org.
New in 2011 |
The Passing of Two Leadrs—Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs have left us. |
| False Compatibility Failed to Sway Market —Did Spectra 70's designers understand what the market wanted? | |
| Must Time and distance Obscure Truth? —Was IBM's first PL/1 compiler really buggy? | |
NEW in 2010 |
The Great Green Words Controversy—SHARE won one for the users. |
| Recollections by a senior IBM scientist of the IBM 1401 —the most widely used and influential small second-generation computer. | |
| How Long Can a Data Name Be? —Why popular programming languages established their rules for names. |
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Older articles |
Reminiscences of Fortran—Thoughts upon the passing of John Backus |
| The Strange Case of Grace Murray Hopper—Why can't we find anything she wrote? | |
| Reminiscences and Myths about COBOL—Misinformation continues to dominate |
Other articles on this web site address historical issues as background for today's methodologies.
Your contributions are invited.
Last modified October 14, 2011
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