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Barbara Liskov Wins Turing Award

Posted by kdawson on from the getting-a-clu dept.

jonniee writes "MIT Professor Barbara Liskov has been granted the ACM's Turing Award. Liskov, the first US woman to earn a PhD in computer science, was recognized for helping make software more reliable, consistent and resistant to errors and hacking. She is only the second woman to receive the honor, which carries a $250,000 purse and is often described as the 'Nobel Prize in computing.'"

2 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Coincidentally by counterplex · · Score: 5, Informative
    I happen to have a printout of an article on "The Liskov Substitution Principle" and was wondering just yesterday how it is that as programmers we use these principles in everyday life yet don't know their names or the stories of how they came about. As the first US woman to earn a PhD in CS, I'm sure there are some interesting stories to tell about it.

    For those who might not have her original text handy, the Liskov Substitution Principle states (rather obviously):

    If for each object o1 of type S there is an object o2 of type T such that for all programs P defined in terms of T, the behavior of P is unchanged when o1 is substituted for o2 then S is a subtype of T

    which, when stated in the words of Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin as something we probably all intuitively understand from our daily work, is:

    Functions that use pointers or references to base classes must be able to use objects of derived classes without knowing it

    --
    $x = ($x * 10) % 10 >= 5 ? 1 + int $x : int $x
  2. 1968 by MoellerPlesset2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since it's not in the article, I looked it up. She got her PhD in 1968.

    I initially thought that kind of sucked (Cambridge's 'Diploma in Computer Science' has been awarded since 1954), but apparently the first US PhD in CS named as such was in 1965 (University of Pennsylvania).

    The field could still use more women though.