deprogrammaticaipsum

deprogrammaticaipsum, 3 months ago to random

"It is unfortunate that people dealing with computers often have little interest in the history of their subject. As a result, many concepts and ideas are propagated and advertised as being new, which existed decades ago, perhaps under a different terminology."

Niklaus Wirth, "A Brief History of Software Engineering" (2008)

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4617912/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

"After that came Turbo Pascal. We had to learn it in University, for simulating some laws of mechanics. We actually had exams about Turbo Pascal without a computer; we had to write the source code of a recursive function on paper, and we would have points taken away if we forgot semicolons.

This is how they taught us programming in university back then. But I do not remember them telling us how to reverse a linked list."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/memories-of-hello-world/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 7 months ago to random

“Even though Marketing buzzwords might have an effect akin to Kryptonite against our readers, we are going to use the famous Gartner’s Five-Step Hype Cycle to take a closer look at the practice of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and its various ups and downs in the past 50 years. Remembering that one of the core tenets of this magazine is to make the impossible dialogue possible, the framework provided by Gartner fits this task perfectly well.” https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/the-hype-cycle-of-oop/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 2 months ago to random

And we continue with the celebrations! On the birdsite, our account never reached more than 280 followers after 4 years of activity… but in the Fediverse, we have reached 300 in less than a year and a half! 🎉

Many thanks for your support! 💙

deprogrammaticaipsum, 1 month ago to random

"BASIC deserved better than to be dismissed and vilified by generations of so-called “professional” or “academic” programmers. Mark Jones Lorenzo’s “Endless Loop,” together with the myriad of available implementations of the language, and the collective impetus of retrocomputing fans to keep it alive in our memories, are the closest thing to a monument that it will ever get."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/mark-jones-lorenzo/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 1 month ago to random

"What has happened is not that we have become disengaged with computers. What has happened is that most of us with a computer do not care about it as a computer. Owning a Commodore 64 is no longer a badge of membership in the hobbyist computer club. That does not mean that the hobbyists are not out there, just that you have got to look harder to find them."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/zx2020/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 3 months ago to random

The 65th edition of De Programmatica Ipsum is out!

In this edition, we react to the sudden news of Niklaus Wirth's passing with memories of the past and perspectives of the present; in the Library section, we review "Classics in Software Engineering" by Edward Nash Yourdon; and in our Vidéothèque section, we watch some recent interviews of Niklaus Wirth himself.

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/issue-65-pascal/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 5 days ago to random

“A farmer, whose portrait is featured on the cover image of this article, who appears completely detached from the urban setting one associates IBM with; in a decidedly bucolic, soothing, and non-technological environment.

(Also, by the way, do not you think he looks suspiciously similar to Waldorf, one of Henson’s most popular Muppets?)”

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/jim-henson/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 15 days ago to random

"The post-Roman period came to be known as the Dark Ages first because they were seen to be unenlightened, until Caesar Baronius retconned it: they were dark because of the lack of written records. In the Digital Dark Ages everybody is writing: posting to Reddit; sending e-mails; chatting in Telegram; producing Office 365 documents. But nobody will be able to read anything they write, and so knowledge of this time will be forgotten. Software has truly eaten the world."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/the-digital-dark-ages/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 24 days ago to random

"Coding for fun, or coding for money, are two absolutely, completely, and irrevocably orthogonal activities. This offset applies not only to coding, by the way; performing any human activity for the mere objective of getting paid, substantially modifies the dynamics of the activity in question, and more importantly, of the person doing it, in ways that neither psychology nor economics fully understand."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/specialization-is-for-insects/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 29 days ago to random

"The next 25 years in BASIC's life will probably be even more exciting than the first 25."

Bill Gates, on "The 25th Birthday of BASIC", BYTE Magazine, October 1989.

(Record scratch sound; narrator voice: spoiler alert, it was not.)

https://d3399nw8s4ngfo.cloudfront.net/visual-basic/Byte_Magazine_Vol_14-10.pdf

deprogrammaticaipsum, 15 days ago to random

"In the twenty-five years since the appearance of the phrase “Open Source”, many authors have tried to explain this simple fact: why do software developers willingly and spontaneously collaborate, often on a pro bono basis, to the creation of open-source software? And most importantly, how does this even happen? Many books have been written around this seemingly illogical fact."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/nadia-asparouhova/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 1 month ago to random

"If you are in the market for business guidance, and enjoy good stories, you will love this one. In our industry, we hear plenty of entrepreneurs referring to the “second coming” of Steve Jobs to save Apple from bankruptcy in 1997, but very few remember that Gerstner pulled a similar feat with IBM just a decade prior, with a much larger payroll than Apple’s, and arguably, with much more at stake."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/james-cortada-emerson-pugh-louis-gerstner-jr/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 1 month ago to random

"The dominance of IBM in the computer industry not only meant large installed bases of IBM 1401s, but also that those operating them would wear the same uniform as those selling them.

Things changed slowly, and then all of a sudden. This transition is quite visible in the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” series of commercials made by Apple in the mid-2000s, one of which even featured fashion icon Gisele Bündchen herself."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/tenue-correcte-exigee/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 1 month ago to random

"The Z3 was the first Turing-complete machine, and Zuse went on to write the first computer chess program in the first high-level programming language Plankalkül, a language of his own devising and an unacknowledged forerunner to ALGOL. This was all part of his PhD thesis, but having failed to pay the submission fee to the University of Augsburg he did not obtain a degree."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/on-research-software-engineering/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 2 months ago to random

"One of the things that makes Liskov such an influential author is that she believes that academic software engineering needs to be applicable to practice to be of any value."

#InternationalWomensDay

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/barbara-liskov/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 22 days ago to random

The 68th edition of De Programmatica Ipsum is out!

This month we analyze the impossible dialogue between graphic designers and developers.; in the Library section, we review "Design for Hackers" by David Kadavy, and in our Vidéothèque section, we watch "Helvetica" by Gary Hustwit.

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/issue-68-design/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 2 months ago to random

"Erica Sadun was already well known in the jailbreak online community, patiently and painstakingly dissecting every new release of the iPhone OS, and dumping class headers for all developers to use in their own applications. She was referred to by Engadget as “one of the soldiers heading up the fight to break Apple’s stranglehold.”"

#InternationalWomensDay

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/erica-sadun/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 25 days ago to random

"A lot has been written about the Apollo Computer and the true nature of alarms 1201 and 1202. We feel the urge to highlight Margaret Hamilton‘s monumental contributions to the history of the 20th century: not just the code that, at the heist of the first manned Lunar landing, produced one of the most dramatic error codes ever logged in the history of software engineering, but her idea of transforming mere programming into, precisely, software engineering."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/margaret-hamilton/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 2 months ago to random

"In spite of the large Union Jack in her chest, Peggy Carter becomes “Captain Carter”, and not “Captain Britain.”

Her name choice is perfectly understandable; at least in our universe, I do not think the country described by Mar Hicks neither deserved a Peggy Carter nor the women who built the computer industry in this, our universe, before their field, recognition, and profits were usurped by men."

#InternationalWomensDay

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/mar-hicks/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 2 months ago to random

"We feel the urge to highlight Margaret Hamilton's monumental contributions to the history of the 20th century: not just the assembly language code that, at the heist of the first manned Lunar landing, produced some of the most dramatic error codes ever logged in the history of software engineering, but her groundbreaking idea of transforming mere programming into, precisely, software engineering."

#InternationalWomensDay

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/margaret-hamilton/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 2 months ago to random

"Fournier has been there. She has worked at small companies and large, in IC, middle, and senior management roles. She is not here to refine the algorithm given above, but instead to help us get comfortable with the idea that there is no algorithm, just heuristics. She describes the heuristics that have worked for her, as well as the times when they have not worked.

This book is useful even if you do not plan to be a manager."

#InternationalWomensDay

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/camille-fournier/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 2 months ago to random

To celebrate #InternationalWomensDay we invite you to read our selection of articles highlighting some women who became legends in computer history: Margaret Hamilton, Adele Goldberg, Camille Fournier, Kathy Sierra, Barbara Liskov, and Jean Sammet, and many others!

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/category/women/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 2 months ago to random

"It was Kathy Sierra who triggered a major, deeper change in the way programming was taught. To be honest, the books by themselves would already have been a major triumph. Her work happened at a time when the dot-com boom opened the door for new ideas, right in the middle of the Web 2.0 craze, and right before the rise of the smartphone and social media."

#InternationalWomensDay

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/kathy-sierra/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 2 months ago to random

Thanks everyone! 🎉 💙