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Donald Knuth Worried About the "Dumbing Down" of Computer Science History
An anonymous reader writes: Thomas Haigh, writing for Communications of the ACM, has an in-depth column about Donald Knuth and the history of computer science. It's centered on a video of Knuth giving a lecture at Stanford earlier this year, in which he sadly recounts how we're doing a poor job of capturing the development of computer science, which obscures vital experience in discovering new concepts and overcoming new obstacles. Haigh disagrees with Knuth, and explains why: "Distinguished computer scientists are prone to blur their own discipline, and in particular few dozen elite programs, with the much broader field of computing. The tools and ideas produced by computer scientists underpin all areas of IT and make possible the work carried out by network technicians, business analysts, help desk workers, and Excel programmers. That does not make those workers computer scientists. ... Computing is much bigger than computer science, and so the history of computing is much bigger than the history of computer science. Yet Knuth treated Campbell-Kelly's book on the business history of the software industry (accurately subtitled 'a history of the software industry') and all the rest of the history of computing as part of 'the history of computer science.'"
Seems to me he's already sold out. :-)
http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200002/df20000210.jpg
Steve Jobs invented computers, smartphones, innovation, and minimalism.
What more does one need to know about computer science history?
Discreet mathematique are the basis for computing
Not at the semiconductor junction level. It is quantum wave functions at that level. Talking about computers as discrete devices, and ignoring the quantum physics, is just dumbing it down. Kids should not be learning programming until they can independently derive both Schrodinger's equation and Heisenburg's matricies.
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