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.'"

Comments

Re:Knuth is right.

[Penguinisto]

One of the problems this causes is the lack of appreciation for the mathematics that defines computer science, and computers.

The end result is politicians making stupid laws and judges making stupid rulings...

With stupid patents on software being the stupid result.

Umm, dunno how else to say it, but honestly? Ignorance of mathematics isn't the cause of stupid laws and policy around technology; lobbyist money, bullshit ideological agendas, and self-serving BS flowing from big tech corporations would be your most likely sources for that.

I'm perfectly willing and eager to be proven wrong on this, but I figure in the list of causes? Ignorance of CompSci-oriented mathematics is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down on the list of causes for stupid governmental tech policy, somewhere around "Clippy".