Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
3
The Sixties - Programming and Systems Engineering
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
- Pablo Picasso, artist
Along with advances in hardware, the sixties also saw steady progress in the creation
and use of software programming languages, operating systems and systems engineering
paradigms.
Most importantly, the innovation of this period defined the
lingua franca
for all com-
puter languages to come.
1968 saw publication of
The Art of Computer Programming: Fundamental Algorithms
by Stanford computer scientist Donald Knuth, the first in a projected seven volume series.
(Since that time, Knuth has been dubbed the "father" of the analysis of algorithms as an art
and science.) In this seminal topic, Knuth sought to formalize skills and best practices of
computer programming which had heretofore been, in his word, mere "folklore" passed on
by word of mouth (and imitation) among pioneer practitioners. Knuth showed the theoretic-
al basis for these practices and procedures, and set forward a rubric of understanding upon
which programmers working in any machine environment, using any language, could base
their work. Previously, programming practices had tended to be machine-specific. Knuth
began the process of thinking about programming as a skill based on fundamentals - most
of all, fundamental algorithms - which lay at the heart of the functioning of any software
running on any machine.
Knuth stressed always that he viewed good programming as ultimately an intuitive art,
where elegant code innovated freely, within only the loosest of constraints (think in terms
of Jazz), would lead to the best software efficiencies. On the other side of the table sat
Edger Dijkstra of the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, who in 1968
began thinking and writing about a "structured" approach to programming within a carefully
defined and uniform process, which would - he believed, contrary to Knuth - lead to the best
result. Increasingly, Knuth's philosophy would reign within the community of pure computer
scientists doing research with what seemed, at the time, little business use, while Dijkstra's
approach would hold the most sway in programming for practical commercial applications.
That same year of 1968 saw the first ever conference focused on a newly enunciated
discipline: software engineering. Sponsored by NATO (then concerned about the veracity
and reliability of the software underpinning a range of defense systems), the conference was
held in Garmisch, Germany. The idea behind the concept of software engineering was to
take randomness out of the process of building software and to create a carefully defined
system for programmers to work within. In other words, according to Ceruzzi, to define "the
