Software Engineers Are the Heroes of New Computer History Museum Exhibit (ieee.org)

Tekla Perry writes: The Computer History Museum set out to turn the spotlight on software engineers and show how they are the changing the world. But what projects to feature in the new, permanent exhibit [called "Make Software: Change the World!"] (that opens to the public this Saturday, January 28th)? The curators whittled a list of 100 technologies that owe their existence to breakthroughs in software down to seven: Photoshop, the MP3, the MRI, car crash simulation, Wikipedia, texting, and World of Warcraft. They expect these choices to be debated at length, in particular, World of Warcraft, but hope the exhibition elevates the prominence of software engineers and gets more than a few middle schoolers talking about targeting their career plans in that direction.

Comments

Please, include a killer drone.

[Anonymous Coward]

$SUBJECT says it all. Since there's so much money sunk in "defense", that's where the bright minds go to work.

Re:Please, include a killer drone.

[infolation]

I guess it's outside the 'top seven', but the simplest, lowest-level, error-free code is the unsung hero to me.

For example, the AGC Apollo Guidance Computer springs to mind as a world-changing piece of code.

(Link is to the original Apollo 11 guidance computer (AGC) source code for Command Module (Comanche055) and Lunar Module (Luminary099).)

Re:Please, include a killer drone.

[Anonymous Coward]

What did it change in the world? Not much. How about the OS for IBM mainframes in the 1960s? That was already running insurance companies, banks, and payroll? Not to mention universities and scientific labs.

That changed the world a lot more than the publicity stunt known as Apollo. For someone who likes "unsung heros", you sure picked the most visible example of code...

Re:Please, include a killer drone.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The AGC was I believe the first (semi-)serially produced computer with integrated circuits, running a real-time priority-driven executive, the kind that we use now in many computer-controlled devices. Being a proven spaceflight fly-by-wire unit, it later became a foundation for initial airplane digital computer FBW experiments.

Re:Please, include a killer drone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. The Minuteman guidance computer was built and flying 5 years earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-37C

You "space enthusiasts" are borderline serial liars with your revisionist nonsense.

Re: Please, include a killer drone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you beaten up in school by aerospace engineer?

Re:Please, include a killer drone.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Don Knuth? For gawd's sake! He is only the most important person in the history of software? Must have been some young twerps who designed this

Re: Please, include a killer drone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better that than to be a willfully ignorant liar as an adult!

Re: Please, include a killer drone.

[Anonymous Coward]

World of Warcraft? Wow, our standards dropped a lot didn't they?

Sure, you can say these things changed some bank balances quite profoundly but I wouldn't call them humanitarian or scientific ventures. We've stopped celebrating human endeavor for the betterment of humankind in favor of...this?

Kids these days, they only buy in to the sexy code. No idea what goes on in the boiler room.

Re: Please, include a killer drone.

[Anonymous Coward]

World of Warcraft is in there as a representative of the gaming industry as a whole, which has certainly changed the world. For the better or not, that is open to argument.

Re:Please, include a killer drone.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Bullshit indeed. Five years earlier than late 1962/early 1963 when the first AGC was built? The circuits didn't even exist in the late 1950s!

Replace MP3 with MPEG.

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 was designed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as part of its MPEG-1 standard.

Re:Replace MP3 with MPEG.

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 is correct as an abbreviation for MPEG-1 Audio Layer III

Re:Replace MP3 with MPEG.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but MP3 is just one aspect of a much larger body of work. That's the point.

Re:Replace MP3 with MPEG.

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 doesn't even belong because the research to develop it was done by one inventor working alone on his PhD dissertation while listening to a song on the radio. There wasn't a social team of socializing socialites behind it. Not social enough for the social era. Remove it from the museum.

Make Money: Change the World!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's be honest, these people don't fucking care about software. They heard social networking is hot shit right now, and they want aboard the money train.

Neither software nor engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

If you call yourself a "software engineer" it shows you understand neither software nor engineering.

It's not a new thought, but it needs repeating. Not since the 1970s has it been a legitimate job title.

Re:Neither software nor engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, construction workers change the world by building the roads we drive on every day! Construction workers aren't civil engineers and coder monkeys aren't software engineers. But there's good news, bro! You can get a job at Uber coding software for self driving cars so every unemployed Uber driver will need to find construction work instead. Changing the world!!!

Re:Neither software nor engineering

[ls671]

You mean like a railroad engineer? (American and Canadian) which is an engine driver, train driver, train operator (British and Commonwealth English); a person who operates a train.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It just come from "engine-man" but "engineer" sure sounds more important.

It still has nothing to do with what a real engineer is but nowadays, everybody is an engineer so there is no discrimination I guess ;-)

Re:Neither software nor engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

No, A railroad engineer comes from a true tradition of building and maintaining engines. He's a person, that if he doesn't spot a crack in a boiler people may die. He's a person who does actual checks and identifies real risks and avoids them using tested techniques. He's a person who, if he fucks up, may end up in jail.

A railroad engineer, is a real engineer in exactly the same sense as software engineers are bullshit.

Re:Neither software nor engineering

[germansausage]

You beat me to it. Around here the real engineers guard their title quite ferociously. Unless you are currently licensed to practice, you had best not be caught using the "e-word". I never could understand why someone would want to claim they were something that they weren't. Sort of like the sad bastards that claim to veterans when they've never served.
 
You can now get a degree in Software Engineering here but I understand it is basically an electrical engineering degree with a specialization in software. A regular Computer Science degree is not the same thing.

Re:Neither software nor engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

I started as a programmer, then got a bachelors in chemical engineering and have become a licensed PE. Back then I never considered calling myself a "software engineer" and sure do have derision for people who use the title without having the actual credentials.

Re:Neither software nor engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineer as is known today wasn't even a thing (discipline) until after WW-II.

Re:Neither software nor engineering

[pjt33]

A regular CS degree may not be the same as a SE degree, but some of them are accredited for receiving the title of "real engineer". For example, the British Computer Society accredits various CS degrees for the Chartered Engineer qualification, and since that's homologised across the EU there must be similar accreditation in other European countries.

Re: Neither software nor engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the credentials? Unlike law and medicine we don't have a smoke-filled room where the old guys go to stroke their beards (Mostly because the nerds have asthma and they're too introverted to go out in public). The credentials aren't Microsoft certifications. Nor are they Oracle certifications. They're not even Sysadmin certifications. There are far too many certifications in software and apparently you need them all PLUS EXPERIENCE to be even borderline employable.

The end result is companies can't find people that know the tech so they hire the freshest of fresh 18-yr old meat hoping they can figure it out in 5 years or so. These kids also get pigeonholed into the tech of one company and become unemployable by 35, and so the cycle repeats. Meanwhile the company moves on to making a new line of quesadilla-makers and selling them via infomercials and AsSeenOnTV.

Re:Neither software nor engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineer as is known today wasn't even a thing (discipline) until after WW-II.

You have to separate being a "Chartered Engineer" from being an "Engineer". This is confusing for many people, especially since the definitions in other languages don't match exactly. For example in French and German "Ingenieur" actually means "chartered engineer" and they have different works for a normal engineer in English.

Once you know that, you will know that there have been professional engineers for many years, from Isambard Kingdom Brunel down to the lowly man throwing coal into the fire of the engine pulling your train. What they all had in common was that they were expected to take responsibility for their mistakes in a way nobody in software does.

Re:Neither software nor engineering

[ls671]

lol:

In Canada, locomotive drivers have a site named "Ingénieurs de locomotives". As my OP link stated, apparently, only in Canada and US do they call train drivers "engineer" so I am not to sure about your English language specific stuff..

http://cpest.teamsterscanada.c...

Digital compressors and filters

[evanh]

The development of digital compressors and filters would be the bare tech at the heart of MPEG and all that followed. And that'll cover all modems too.

Separating hardware from software becomes difficult.

Re: Digital compressors and filters

[Entrope]

Modems aren't compressors, and filters are radically different from compression algorithms. Modems use filters, but also do other things, such as (nowadays) forward error correction. Speaking of which: Computationally efficient, near-Shannon-limit codes are another truly impressive development in tech.

Re: Digital compressors and filters

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't really "tech", it's math that can be implemented in tech. It was also invented by a white man, which these days is dangerously close to heresy. I predict this museum will be shut down in a week for lack of diversity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Gallager

They forgot compilers

[Viol8]

Without these NONE of the above would have happened. Good luck programming any of them in assembler.

Re:They forgot compilers

[Anonymous Coward]

But everything should be rewritten in Fatwa^H^H^H^H^HJavaScript! Apps!

Re:They forgot compilers

[GuB-42]

I think the reason they didn't mention compilers, and OSes for that matter is that they limited themselves to things that are actually useful for the end user, not what lie behind it.
All examples are the visible part of different kinds of underlying technologies. It is actually a pretty good list as they managed to represent a wide variety of technology with a wide variety of applications.

The choice of World of Warcraft is a particularly good one IMHO. Video games are a major component of the history of computing and it is important to include something to represent this industry. WoW is a very successful game made by a very successful company and so, a good representative. There is also a wide array of technologies behind it. It is a realtime 3D game with all that implies in term of computer imaging and GPU development, it also has a complex network architecture behind it, with game servers, database servers, load balancing, etc... Being a paid game with a subscription, it even dips into eCommerce.

Re:They forgot compilers

[Anonymous Coward]

Visit the museum and you will find them in another section.

Re:They forgot compilers

[Viol8]

WoW is neither the first of its kind nor the best, its just arguably the most popular. Yes, there's a lot of infrastructure behind it but there's just as much behind the till you buy your groceries at. So what. If they want to represent videogames then pong, space invaders, pacman or even Doom would have been far more appropriate.

Re:They forgot compilers

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be amazed if the first MP3 codecs weren't written in assembly.
Writing complex programs in assembly isn't that hard. There are these things called macros that come in handy.

Re:They forgot compilers

[Anonymous Coward]

Quantity of infrastructure does not equal quality of infrastructure.

Re:They forgot compilers

[waveclaw]

I think the reason they didn't mention compilers, and OSes for that matter is that they limited themselves to things that are actually useful for the end user, not what lie behind it.

At one point compilers and OSes were the things used by the end-user. The very definition of an operating system is a kernel, standard library and compiler. This means that for most of its history Microsoft did not actually sell a actual computer operating system by definition. But for many users their computer is just their favorite application. To your accountant the computer is just a means to access email, quickbooks and irs.gov. To your kids the computer is the thing that provides access to disney.com.

The biggest change has been in the users, not so much in what was provided. The typical target user has not been academics or geeks in decades. Applications are targeted at children with no technical skills, busy parents with no technical skills and professionals with absolutely no technical skills. They interface to the computer in their pocket through rote, learned application-centric tasks. Like thumb pressing a share button to tweet a picture of their cat.

Video games are a major component of the history of computing and it is important to include something to represent this industry.

The popular media may want to whitewash history but major improvements in computing like operating systems, networking and personal computers follow two very end-user focused applications of processing power. One is pornography. The other is video games. Ken Thompson developed little project called UNIX based on a system to play a game called Space Travel on a PDP-7. That design seems to have done pretty well. The success of AOL hinged upon their dominance of the online "dating" scene, not so much their free coasters. Modern machine learning algorithms are designed with kernels that run efficiently on PC video cards. The same cards which had their expensive research and development paid for by at home video game enthusiasts craving a few more pixels or FPS.

But to your system administrator you are all equally end-users. Compiler in hand or not.

"The pillars of your bright new world were built by people whose minds are so arcane and alien to you that you will never be able to comprehend exactly how much you rely on the hobbies of dead legends."
-- Lesrahpem "LINUX INSIDE!" (paraphrased) 2009 September 22 03:44 AM

Re:They forgot compilers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because pong would be a real thrill to watch in a museum.

Re:They forgot compilers

[Anonymous Coward]

Should have been Pong or Adventure. Also, they left out the BBS and AOL which essentially brought us the Internet.

Re:They forgot compilers

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not too bad if you add some drama.

Re:They forgot compilers

[Anonymous Coward]

> The very definition of an operating system is a kernel, standard library and compiler.

Um, where did you hear that?

Traditionally vendors did not include compilers and libraries with their OS's unless you paid extra.

As long as they don't include Steve Jobs

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I'll only take this exhibition seriously if it has something on Woz and nothing on the "genius" Steve Jobs for a change.

Re:As long as they don't include Steve Jobs

[JasterBobaMereel]

All of these (except MRI) are the Steve Jobs of software, they are the secondary popular copy of someone else's original idea

Re:As long as they don't include Steve Jobs

[The-Ixian]

Agreed. Though, these are only going to be the big sexy projects that everyone can recognize.

Something tells me that fundamental network protocols, text editors, command line tools, file systems and so on will not be mentioned.

It's always the rock stars that get all the attention even though they inevitably rely on a million work horses behind the scenes to achieve their popularity.

BSOD

[l20502]

spotted, is it intententional?

What a load of crock

[thegarbz]

Software that changed the world? World of Warcraft is a game, what about pageranking and crawling? Where's the search engines?

Why is a patent encumbered music compression format on the list, did music not get shared before it? I mean the most popular online music shops don't use that format, neither does digital radio. Why MP3 and not AAC, and isn't MP3 just a succession of a previous format and one that is under constant redevelopment?

On that list, Photoshop, MRIs and Wikipedia deserve the place. The rest should get the curators fired.

Re:What a load of crock

[Slashvertisment]

Why is a patent encumbered music compression format on the list, did music not get shared before it?

You've answered your own question, the answer is yes. The introduction of the MP3 format directly led to the explosive growth of music sharing online. Before MP3 in the bad old days WAV was about it, and even relatively small audio clips were far too large to store or transfer many of.

Re:What a load of crock

[Anonymous Coward]

Before WAV we had .au files which were compressed but 8kHz sounded terrible.

Re:What a load of crock

[klingens]

One can debate if it's WoW that should depict computer games. Personally I would have chosen Pong oder PacMan, probably Pong.
But computer gaming has redefined the world, for better or worse.

MP3 did change the world cause it was first. Just like the cars 100 years ago changed the world, even when a horse and buggy was waayyy more practical and faster and cheaper then. Mrs. Benz' car was simply shit when she made her historical drive to relatives, but the concept of cars changed the world. Same with MP3s. AAC is irrelevant: one in a long string of different forgettable formats. MP3 was the first psychoacoustic format unlike mp2, where you leave out stuff that doesn't matter subjectively, same as with all our video codecs. The only competitor there is JPEG, which IIRC was before MP3, another lossy format. Only that crucial innovation allows us to have digital media across a network, medialibraries in our pockets, etc.

Tho there should have been a few other inventions, more important than all the consumer facing things. Like COBOL, like spreadsheets. Stuff that changed society behind the curtain but changed it nevertheless. But it's easier to bring in people and especially kids going to the museum (schoolchildren who have to go to a educational day trip) with consumer and especially kid facing technologies. They can relate to WoW, better than to Pong, and COBOL ist totally alien to every one of them and therefore booooring.

Re:What a load of crock

[_merlin]

Pong is pure TTL logic - there's no computer programming involved. Pac-Man is as much about the sprite/tilemap hardware used to throw graphics on the screen with a relatively slow CPU as it is about the game programming.

Re:What a load of crock

[JaredOfEuropa]

Actually I thought it was a pretty good list... but I did miss search engines in there. Now there's something that many of us use several times a day for a wide range of tasks, truly a world changer.

In some cases it looks like they did not choose the first instance of a certain idea or piece of technology, but the instance that popularized it. Hence MP3 instead of AAC or previous formats, and WoW instead of Nethack or Ultima Online. Photoshop? Not the first either.

Of course there's always going to be some discussion about lists like these. Personally I am missing VisiCalc on the list; a brilliant idea and bit of software that has persisted in many people's everday lives in more or less the same form, to this day.

Re:What a load of crock

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? Photoshop brings practically nothing to the table that wasn't already there. If you think Photoshop belongs on the list and not MP3, you're just a cocksucking piece of shit.

Re:What a load of crock

[Registered Coward v2]

Software that changed the world? World of Warcraft is a game, what about pageranking and crawling? Where's the search engines?

Why is a patent encumbered music compression format on the list, did music not get shared before it? I mean the most popular online music shops don't use that format, neither does digital radio. Why MP3 and not AAC, and isn't MP3 just a succession of a previous format and one that is under constant redevelopment?

On that list, Photoshop, MRIs and Wikipedia deserve the place. The rest should get the curators fired.

I like that they are including the historical context. In rush to create programs we forget they are often merely a new way to do something that has been done before. They are innovative and often provide capabilities and ease of use the previous incarnations lacked; but they aren't new ideas. D&D existed before WOW, Darkrooms before Photoshop, telegrams before texting, etc. Like sex, every generation thinks they discovered it while the previous ones just chuckle...

Re:What a load of crock

[CastrTroy]

The MP3 file didn't create the phenomenon of sharing music. There were other competing formats at the time. MP3 just happened to be the one that everyone latched on to. I remember downloading music in many other formats including RealAudio, TwinVQ, MP2, OGG, and WMA. The home internet connection itself let to the explosive growth of music sharing online. The format didn't really matter all that much, and without MP3, another of the available formats would have easily taken its place.

Re:What a load of crock

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 isn't a "succession" of anything.

It's MPEG-1 Layer 3 Audio. The fact that it's from the MPEG-1 standard means that, no, it's not a successor to anything. The layers (1, 2, and 3) are progressively more complicated compression layers. Layer 1 is barely compression at all. Layer 2 is much more complex and effective. Layer 3 is crazy-complicated and way better than the others. But none of them are successors to the others. They were all written into the same spec.

Re: What a load of crock

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oder" is a nazi word. Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the National Socialist Party?

Re:What a load of crock

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 is what created the mass sharing of music. Before MP3 and Winamp, sharing of music was very niche, done via BBS's or an FTP at some university or such. With MP3, it hit the mainstream, with indexed websites and so on, leading to Napster etc.

Re:What a load of crock

[Anonymous Coward]

World of Warcraft is a strange choice. Microsoft Research has contributed more to online gaming than people realize: the technologies created for the Microsoft Gaming Zone and the associated (and unparalleled) game called Allegiance pretty much defined MMOGs before we had anything like it.

Re:What a load of crock

[Solandri]

MP3s were the first time something widely considered to be a physical product (music records, tapes) became a virtual product, transcending any physical encumbrances. Earlier software-only products (computer programs, TV broadcasts) had always been thought of as a virtual product. Since MP3s, other products have or are becoming virtual products (movies, books, product designs for printing on 3D printers).

Technically, stitching patterns were the first thing to make this transition. In the early 19th century, the textile industry started to use mechanical looms which could be "programmed" to make cloth with a certain pattern. These patterns were stored as holes punched into paper cards which would physically guide the looms into stitching the pattern. People quickly figured out that you could "steal" a pattern just by copying the sequence of holes, not actually stealing the physical card. But these were limited to the industry, not widely known about by the general public like MP3s.

I actually would've selected Napster instead of MP3s. While MP3 was the format which freed music from a physical body, it was just a format. If it hadn't been MP3, it would've been some other format like .au (Sun's PCM format which supported u-law lossy compression). Napster is the software which taught the public that music was a virtual concept that could be exchanged just as easily as exchanging ideas, not a physical thing.

Re:What a load of crock

[thegarbz]

You've answered your own question, the answer is yes.

You look like you've been paying as much attention to history as the curators. MP3 wasn't the start of sharing, Napster was. Music got shared before hand in various formats, and continues to be shared now in various formats. MP3 was a temporary and incremental improvement in compression of previous formats. There were better compression techniques (equally encumbered such as ATRAC) at the time, and the only reason sharing gained popularity is due to the actual sharing methods not the compression.

Put Napster in the list as something that changed the world if you want. The work done on that directly lead to decentralisation efforts that ultimately gave us things like torrent. MP3 is completely inconsequential in the world.

Re:What a load of crock

[thegarbz]

but the instance that popularized it.

So MP3 still doesn't belong on the list because what popularised music sharing was Napster, and MP3 was a consequence of it being the default format Napster looked for.

Re:What a load of crock

[thegarbz]

You're miscrediting history, and then you came to the correct conclusion by the end of the post. There was nothing special about MP3. ATRAC had almost quality parity 3 years before MP3 was standardised, and had far superseded it shortly after. What made MP3 special was Napster which not only deserves its place on the list for popularising the idea of stored shareable music, but also started the idea of a P2P network which paved the way to decentralised P2P systems we have today, i.e. a true game changer.

Re:What a load of crock

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest should get the curators fired.

Jesus. Overreact much?

Re:What a load of crock

[Anonymous Coward]

You accuse someone of "miscrediting history" (whatever that means), and then you go on to say that Napster started the idea of peer-to-peer networks?

Re: What a load of crock

[Anonymous Coward]

The curators were probably doing part of their job that folks like you and I don't appreciate much - sexing the exhibit up to draw kids in.

Software enginners are an endangered Species

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon to be replaced by the all seeing Google AI
See one now before they become museum relics.

{retired SW Developer}

AGC [was: Please, include a killer drone]

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. This is awesome. This repo is 5.6 M (including lots of docs) while some old-ish jquery (no repo, no docs) weighs in at 1/4 M. The bloated crap we've to put up with these days.

Not Sure How I feel about this

[zifn4b]

I'm curious how other software engineers feel about this. I mean, I started on a Commodore 64 as a kid and later went on to architect highly scalable enterprise systems but for some reason I don't feel like we need a museum to honor the people who practice our trade. I feel like we should recognize the amazing feats we accomplished with our passion, ingenuity and persistence and inspire others with them. I'm no hero. I'm just a master of a craft and in performing my craft I try to make the world a better place with it.

Also, I doubt the creators of World of Warcraft would consider themselves heroes. World of Warcraft was just an epic feat in creating a time waster. Don't get me wrong, it was a feat of software engineering but it didn't really add much value to the world. There are far better examples of software systems that did really make a difference in the world. For example, we should be honoring DARPA for creating the very technology that Slashdot broadcasts its information on and we have these discussions on. Disney's Spaceship Earth had a futuristic vision of Earth sponsored by AT&T that we would have a global communication network where we could video conference each other around the world. Guess what? We've arrived at the future vision. That's something to stand in sheer awe of, not World of Warcraft and Photoshop.

Re:Not Sure How I feel about this

[Anonymous Coward]

When we celebrate architecture and it's heroes, we celebrate the likes of Sir Christopher Wren, not so much the guy who designed the extension to your house.

Re:Not Sure How I feel about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said. Btw, you used the word "engineer" when it should have been "programmer". Developing software is not a physics-based discipline like electrical, mechanical or chemical engineering and therefore is nowhere near the rigor required to be "engineering".

Re:Not Sure How I feel about this

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL good one. Find it in Volume I of "Tired Old Party Trolls?"

Re:Not Sure How I feel about this

[StormReaver]

[Internet technology is] something to stand in sheer awe of, not World of Warcraft and Photoshop.

I agree entirely. NONE of those seven things on the list rise to the level of software heroics. The Internet, on the other hand, changed the world in a way that no other software even remotely approaches.

While this Computer History Museum exhibit's purpose is laudable, its choices for the exhibit are shamefully ridiculous.

Re:Not Sure How I feel about this

[Anonymous Coward]

"When we celebrate architecture and it's heroes"

I celebrate the apostrophe and its proper usage. You'd be my hero if you could tell its from it is.

Re:Not Sure How I feel about this

[JK_the_Slacker]

I could easily argue that the Internet was just an epic feat in creating a time waster.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss World of Warcraft when considering software that added value to the world. For players, there are certainly social benefits to playing, as well as improvements in cooperation, fine motor skills, and tactical and strategic thinking. The game also encourages socialization outside your geographical region, and often outside your cultural boundaries.

From a scientific point of view, the Corrupted Blood incident has been studied by epidemiologists in an attempt to better understand and diagnose the causes and spread of disease. It has also been studied as an example of how terrorists might operate during a biological attack. The psychology of different player types would make a fascinating study, as well as studying the effects of anonymity on behavior. And from an economic point of view, you could test nearly anything you wanted by looking at different kinds of realms.

The truth is, many of us are a bit too quick to dismiss games as "something for kids" or "time-wasters." It's certainly true in some cases, but video games in particular started incorporating aspects of literature, philosophy, and culture long ago. If you want a deeper understanding of history, give Europa Universalis or the Age of Empires games a shot. Games like This War of Mine and Spec Ops: The Line will give you a much greater appreciation for the horrors of war, and even PTSD. Ask any player of Katawa Shoujo, Life is Strange, or To The Moon if those games have had an impact on their outlook on life. Ask a Dark Souls player what it has to teach about persistence in the face of adversity.

I would encourage anyone at all to check out the Extra Credits channel on Youtube. In particular, have a look at some of their videos that approach video games from a cultural, artistic, educational, or personally impactful point of view. The "Because Games Matter" series is very good (and recent).

Re:Not Sure How I feel about this

[Anonymous Coward]

I would argue our achievements in software design and implementation deserve to be honored in such a way. Do you believe they're getting too much attention? How does that compare to how we honor football players? I'm all for humility, but let's not lessen the impact of our collective works here. You can argue that there is software not in this list that had more value, but you can't say that Photoshop and WoW weren't tremendously influential in their own right. They're a part of our history and that's what museums are about. DARPA already has a permanent place in every science museum I have been to.

In any case, I agree that using the term "heroes" is an exaggeration, but If your contributions have made a major impact on the world, then a mere museum exhibit is completely warranted in my eyes.

Re:Not Sure How I feel about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Your only as big as the thing's you celebrate, heheheheh!

Re:Not Sure How I feel about this

[zifn4b]

Well said. Btw, you used the word "engineer" when it should have been "programmer". Developing software is not a physics-based discipline like electrical, mechanical or chemical engineering and therefore is nowhere near the rigor required to be "engineering".

Go try to solve Primes in P and let me know how much easier it is than electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering. By the way, you might also get a million dollars if you can because it might help solve P vs NP. But you know, mathematics is easy right especially for you electrical engineers. Easy peasy. Godspeed my friend! p.s.: I find it funny this debate has been raging for decades. :)

Re:Not Sure How I feel about this

[zifn4b]

How does that compare to how we honor football players?

I think it's insane that we pay some sports players millions of dollars a year but police officers and firefighters that keep you and your family safe in a lot of cases make below median household income. We usually don't recognize the true merits of things.

Re:Not Sure How I feel about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Developing software is not a physics-based discipline like electrical, mechanical or chemical engineering and therefore is nowhere near the rigor required to be "engineering".

The space shuttle was one of the most complex machines ever built, containing over 2.5 million parts.

The software in your car may contain up to 100 million lines of code. If you think that doesn't require rigor, well... more power to you.

Actual Engineers are licensed and can be sued

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are an actual engineer instead of a pretend one, you have to be professionally licensed, have a certain amount of education, and most importantly, if you fuck up your professional responsibility then you can be sued and held liable for the failure of the products you create.

Software Engineer.... ok.

Re:Actual Engineers are licensed and can be sued

[Anonymous Coward]

As a licensed and bonded sanitation engineer, I agree! Yup! Yup! Yup! These pretenders are a disgrace to the engineers of the world! That being said, I know people who know people that have these software engineers as friends. What a world, huh!

BUILD THE WALL!
BUILD THE WALL!
BUILD THE WALL!

Re:Actual Engineers are licensed and can be sued

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why I have to carry $10M worth of professional indemnity insurance.
It is needed when working in some markets.
Then employers bitch about my rates. That amount of insurance is not cheap.

look at life: has software changed it?

[PMuse]

Clearly, the museum wasn't trying to list the top 7 most inventive software creations ever. Instead, they looked at people's lives / endeavors and ask whether software had changed that aspect of life. Roughly:

Entertainment (visual): Photoshop
Entertainment (audio): MP3
Medicine: MRI
Manufacturing: car crash simulation
Scholarship: Wikipedia
Communication: texting
It Makes a Visually Appealing Exhibit: World of Warcraft

Re:look at life: has software changed it?

[neo-mkrey]

Minecraft would have been a better choice -- it is both educational and entertaining.

Re:look at life: has software changed it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Minecraft...
It might be the software with the biggest usage and worst programming in it (in term of resources used VS cpu / gpu / memory usage.)

XEROX PARC

[Anonymous Coward]

Where engineers wrote the first code for graphical interfaces - windows, which was the basis for Apple's Macintosh and later Microsoft Windows and every modern operating system. Without that, we'd all be working on command-lines.

They also created the laser printer there, among other items, but I guess that isn't "software" engineering.

Re:XEROX PARC

[Anonymous Coward]

"Where engineers wrote the first code for graphical interfaces"

Certainly not. What about SAGE, the 1950s radar computer with light gun interface? That wasn't graphical?

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/images/icp/N580165A27485M26/us__en_us__ibm100__sage__sage_operator__800x625.jpg

He's not drilling into the CRT, he's clicking on targets!

Sketchpad?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USyoT_Ha_bA

What about The Mother Of All Demos?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY

Without THAT, well, someone else would have invented it...

Software Engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

The cause of and solution to all of modern life's problems.

Re:How do you walk?

[Anonymous Coward]

> that massive dick swinging in front of you [...]

But it protects you somewhat in the case of a lawsuit, honest!

Make Software: Change the World of Warcraft!

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the new Make Software: Change the World! exhibit sponsored by Blizzard!

Re: Make Software: Change the World of Warcraft!

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw Blizzard. They have abandoned that World. Their game title should be "World of Instance Loading Interfaces." You have to go to mangos for a server and find an old WoW binary to explore the World of Warcraft in 2017.

Yeah, maybe the first ones

[Anonymous Coward]

but certainly not the "engineers" who can make my phone, with a 1GHz processor, take 30 seconds to respond to a screen touch.
And constantly goes into "scanning SD card" mode even though nothing's changed.

Some heroes.

Re:Oh, fuck off.

[gnick]

I understand software and engineering quite well, and I use the title.

I'm surprised I don't. I have a MSEE and I was employed as an EE for 14 years up until August. Now my title is "Programmer." I would have preferred "Software Engineer" for resume purposes, but "Programmer" fits just fine. At least it would if I was a capable programmer.

emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot emacs.

Re: How do you walk?

[Anonymous Coward]

It protects the one swinging the dick.

WWW / Web browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have thought that creating the web and the various web browsers was very, very significant. Really enabled e-commerce, changed how people gather information, ...

I guess they thought the whole TCP/IP thing was hardware?

Bette Middler and Sarah Jessica, App the World!

[Anonymous Coward]

Disney should remake Hocus Pocus just for this Museum.

Early Winamp

[SeattleLawGuy]

Early Winamp was what made the mp3 work. It was really a great example of "it just works" software. Seeking was quick, plugins were plentiful, they didn't bundle lots of bloatware, it was just a better experience than most of the other options at the time.

Re:Proud to be one (17++ yr. professionally)

[Anonymous Coward]

Just. Fuck. Off.

Re:Oh, fuck off.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a stupid bit of snark in the 1970s, and it remains one today. I understand software and engineering quite well, and I use the title.

-jcr

An engineer is a person who takes responsibility for what he delivers. If his steam engine explodes because he over-stokes the boiler he expects to go to jail or die. If his bridge collapses because he decided to buy cheaper steel than needed, he goes to jail. If his Shuttle explodes he expects to kill people and have a full inquiry.

A software guy is a guy who hides behind his EULA and delivers the IOT software which powers the mirai botnet, the software that powered Schiaparelli and Exomars into the surface of mars and a large number of Toyotas into the back of the car in front of them. The software guys, developers, programmers, coders, software craftsmen behind these disasters are rightly not sitting in prison because we don't know enough about software to do engineering with it.

A software engineer is an oxymoron. You are defrauding the public every time you use the term. If you truly understood software you would know that.

Re:Oh, fuck off.

[Anonymous Coward]

An engineer is a person who takes responsibility for what he delivers.

You're a fucking moron.

Here you go, all the way from the 70s, and yeah, they got the shit sued out of them.

As for engineers in jail, cite? Sure, you'll run around like a needledick citing cases where engineers covered up malfeasance and went to jail, but NEVER will you cite a situation where an engineer actually went to jail without mitigating circumstances of a crime.

I'd smack you, but shit splatters.

After you raise your arms

[Anonymous Coward]

Beware the angry Trump mob bearing tar and feathers. Turn around and run.

EQ

[OrangeTide]

Wasn't EverQuest effectively the same as World of War craft except 5 years earlier? I've played both, the details are different but the general idea is the same.

Most of these MMOs aren't as good as UO back in it's golden days.

Re:Oh, fuck off.

[Anonymous Coward]

An engineer is a person who takes responsibility for what he delivers.

You're a fucking moron.

Here you go, all the way from the 70s, and yeah, they got the shit sued out of them.

"They" in this case means the company involved which "settled out of court" whilst nobody even mentioned the specific "software engineers" involved because they all knew they weren't real engineers.

As for engineers in jail, cite?

Five seconds on google searching "bridge collapse jail" would have saved you embarassment:

• In the Maccabiah collapse five people including the engineer were jailed
• this even happens in places like India notorious otherwise for rich people avoiding jail
• or in China
• Gas Engineers too

Sure, you'll run around like a needledick citing cases where engineers covered up malfeasance and went to jail, but NEVER will you cite a situation where an engineer actually went to jail without mitigating circumstances of a crime.

I'd smack you, but shit splatters.

That word, mitigating, I do not think it means what you think it means. But I do apologise because you make me so afraid.

Backspace Key

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM 026 - I'm a schmuck. IBM 029 - I'm a hero.

Jealous are we, little anonymous loser? Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

See my subject: LMAO @ U over it (as it's truth from an UNIDENTIFIABLE nobody "ne'er-do-well" in yourself).

* :)

APK

P.S.=> It's not MY fault you're reduced to being a TROLLING SCUMBAG that's completely off-topic & jealous you wasted your life instead of educating yourself being successful like myself you know, lol... apk

Proud to be one (17++ yrs. professionally)

[Anonymous Coward]

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APK

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High order bits of software being overlooked

[Anonymous Coward]

It's horrifying that this so completely overlooks the software technologies that made the others possible: compilers, operating systems, and codecs. All these "Heroes" would be coding still without these base technologies. In addition, without scaling the hardware from microns to nanometers, what these heroes did would be nothing but theoretical. [Another strangely appropriate capcha: "gimmcks"]

Wow, does that mean I get to wear a cape

[PJ6]

and my underwear on the outside, and not get dragged off by security?