[Chicago] Good readings on the history of computing

Wed Sep 25 17:40:02 CEST 2013

This thread has come alive in a way I have not seen here in a while.

@Yarko - Agile - pair programming - Community - memories of terminal rooms
- all interesting to me

I have to go back now and go to that link and bookmark it.  I was actually
planning on watching daytime tv all day today.  Perhaps following that link
will be a better use of my entertainment time.

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 10:31 AM, Yarko Tymciurak <yarkot1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Randy - to follow up on that note,   I wonder if anyone would want to try
> out   "remote pair programming"  as a method for doing project nights for
> Chipy (or in general).   Besides some of the "stuff" for that being written
> in python, it could be an interesting way to invite and connect with people
> we might otherwise have trouble getting together (or getting here).
>
> Interestingly,  the remote-pair-programming "craze" (?)  grew out of a
> group who took a MOOC which Armondo Fox started  (Software as a Service) -
> which taught rapid concepts by teaching ruby and ruby tools, so this group
> is mostly people looking for ruby-pairs, but if anyone wants to try out
> some of these,  I'd be pleased -- we could certainly do something like this
> around python (or golang, or javascript, or dart, or erlang, or ruby, or
> all of the above - [captical-C]-Community! ;-)).
>
> If anyone is interested in flushing out some of these tools interactively
> w/ me, I'm game:
>
> I'm particularly interested in flushing out madeye and floobits (being a
> vi guy, going into sublime w/ all it's context sensitive plugins, which are
> great).
>
> http://www.agileventures.org/remote-pair-programming
>
>
> Regards,
> - Yarko
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 10:07 AM, Randy Baxley <randy7771026 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> @Daniel - extremely engaging.  Also met him and his son in the Starbucks
>> at the Palmer House.  As this was immediately after taking my first MOOC
>> which was this class then sitting and having coffee with the prof, who
>> shares a lot of the same history I have lived but with different geography,
>> his son(band video on YouTube), and other students was an interesting
>> juxtaposition of VW vs RW.
>>
>> Head in the clouds here but If we could get him on board for a project
>> that would take folks from zero to dev or designer I think it would be
>> great.
>>
>>
>>  On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 9:50 AM, Daniel Fehrenbach <
>> dnfehrenbach at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> @Randy - I had Dr. Chuck as a professor at Michigan, hope that his
>>> Coursera stuff was as engaging as he is in person
>>>
>>> A lot softer than a lot of things mentioned previously but Neal
>>> Stephenson has a, really outdated but readable essay on operating system
>>> history as seen through his experience
>>> http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 9:39 AM, Randy Baxley <randy7771026 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> This makes me wish I had unlimited time and also had my young eyes back.
>>>>
>>>> I lived some very good pieces of all of this.
>>>>
>>>> I hate to keep recommending Dr-Chuck but his course on Coursera in
>>>> Internet History, Technology and Security is an enjoyable romp.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Jordan Bettis <jordanb at hafd.org>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 09/24/2013 02:40 PM, Jason Wirth wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Does anyone have suggestion for articles on the history of computing?
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Note, Python specific stuff would be great but it doesn't have to be
>>>>> > python specific, and almost by definition probably won't be.
>>>>> >
>>>>>
>>>>> I can recommend a few books that I've read:
>>>>>
>>>>> *Computing in the Middle Ages* by Servero M Ornstein
>>>>>
>>>>> This guy became a programmer on a drum memory machine, went to Lincoln
>>>>> Labs at MIT when they were building SAGE. He was part of the transition
>>>>> from Lincoln Labs to MITRE and worked on the TX-1. He then worked on
>>>>> LINC (Which became the PDP-8), went to BBN and worked on ArpaNet, then
>>>>> to Xerox PARC and worked on Alto.
>>>>>
>>>>> The book is a memorial of his career and what it was like working on
>>>>> the
>>>>> above projects.
>>>>>
>>>>> *Before the Computer* by James W Cortada
>>>>> *A History of Modern Computing* by Paul E Ceruzzi
>>>>>
>>>>> These are two academic treatments of the subject by academic
>>>>> historians.
>>>>> The first covers mechanical and electro-mechanical information
>>>>> processing from the invention of the cash register and type writer,
>>>>> through adding machines and ends with the creation of vacuum tube
>>>>> computers.
>>>>>
>>>>> The second begins with UNIVAC and ends with the invention of the Web.
>>>>>
>>>>> Like I said, they're academic treatments of the subject so fairly
>>>>> rigorously written.
>>>>>
>>>>> A final one I might hesitatingly recommend is:
>>>>>
>>>>> *The Universal History of Computing* by Georges Ifrah
>>>>>
>>>>> This was written in French and translated into English. The writing is
>>>>> quite dense and it goes off into the weeds at the end, which is why I
>>>>> hesitate to recommend it.
>>>>>
>>>>> But it begins with a discussion of numbering systems, and demonstrates
>>>>> how the positional numbering system was a precondition for even
>>>>> thinking
>>>>> about mathematics as something that could be done mechanically.
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>>>>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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