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How Computers Work... in 1971
prostoalex writes "A recent submission to my free tech books site included a title that I thought many Slashdotters would enjoy. How It Works: The Computer (published 1971 and re-published 1979) is an exciting look into this new thing called computer. The site presents the scanned pages of 1971 and 1979 editions, and you can see how the page on computer code changes over 8 years from punchcards exclusively to magnetic tapes."
Just what I was thinking. Seriously, if we'd start kids off with a book like this they might grow up with a better understanding that it's just a machine and it can't read your mind.
This principle is not just for technical works, either. I recently happened upon a copy of George Fischer's "Your Career in Computers" (Meredith Press, 1968[!]). The chapter list reads almost like a modern IT-career tome: "A computer in your life", "For high school grads", "From Wall Street to Main Street", "Opportunities in government", etc.
"Programming in machine code is a job for a highly trained person, whereas programming in a high level language is something most people can do provided they are given time to learn the rules that must be followed"
That was optimistic. We have languages such as C++, Python, Java etc now (compared to FORTRAN and COBOL they mentioned in the book) and still programming is sort of a geek thing.
General Principles dont change and sometimes Retro Prinicpals come back. While the concept on how binary computer work havn't change much many solutions may have. But it is funny when a tech company comes up with this "new" method of doing somthing how long does it take before "the old fart" to go oh I have seen this approach before it was used on this so and so system for this. It actually worked good then but they fased it out because this other method was faster. But now that computers are maginitude faster then this old method should be great because of its added so and so. Actually if you look at some of the old technology I am amiased on some of the methods that they used to acomplish the taskes. And how today many of them are done a lot easier.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Hey, how about you just be thankful for the fact that this is online for free, instead of complaining about a totally free service that you get for free on a website that you don't have to pay to access.
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
Somewhere along the line, computer programming was co-opted into professional studies as 'engineering' and 'science' and unfortunately, women were actively discouraged from entering those professions. Only now is this changing ...
I'm sick and tired of hearing this bullcrap. For the past 20-30 years, there's been nothing but active encouragement for women to denounce their traditional gender roles and perform tasks normally associated with men. I'm not saying that isolated instances of discrimination don't exist, but there's no conspiracy to keep women out of science and technology.
Not in my country, nor in my experience. When I say 'actively discouraged', I mean it. Been there, done that, saw it happen myself. Many of my contemporaries ( I graduated in '89) tend to concur, BTW.
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Come on moderators... why does this guy get a (-1, troll) and the guy who said "you'll have SCO on your ass, you're distributing their code." a few lines down gets a (5, funny)? Mod parent up. His was funnier... and first.
Free Scotland!
Although of course wildly outdated even when it was published (as all useful computer books always are) a good book explaining the basics is never wrong. And the basics still are the same. There is still is loads of information in these old books that would be useful to anyone getting into computers, surprisingly enough... :-)
;)
I held a course in TCP/IP in the early nineties. The part that most clearly divided the class was the net mask. People that had studied computer science, or were self-taught nerds, of course already knew binary arithmetic. They found using net masks trivial. The people who had ended up as network administrators by mistake (most of them, really) had huge problems. After holding this course a couple of times, I simply extended it with teaching everybody binary arithmetic first. That made it easier for most people.
You don't need to know how a computer works to use it anymore, but a good network manager should still know it, and a programmer won't last two weeks without understanding what actually goes on.
Well, maybe if he is using Python.
Where she really comes through is (of course) in her writing, but also in her understanding of the philisophical implications of computation. She was writing about music and human thought in terms of computation when no one else was. Charles was stuck on industrial uses, it seems, but Ada had a good eye for the big picture.
Anyway, it's just a bit of a nit of mine to see people refere to Ada as the world's first programmer or some crap like that (what about Eratosthenes?!). It's doing a great disservice to Ada's work and the role of women in computing. You want a female role model, I highly recommend Grace Hopper. Grace truly was outstanding in technical work. I think Ada took after her father, though, despite her mother, and her strengths laid elsewhere.