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otherwise-disparate traditions of vocational programming and academic
computer science. As the Soviet computer scientist Andrei Ershov sug-
gested in a 1972 address to the Joint Computer Conference of the ACM,
“an understanding, a feeling for the aesthetic of programming, is needed,
and not only as a driving force for the programmer: it is necessary for
those who manage programmers, and especially for those who educate
and train them.” This artistic sensibility was not simply essential for
cultivating creativity, Ershov argued, but also allowed computer experts
to avoid being converted “what is simply a highly paid subgroup of the
working class.” “If such a tendency is to be resisted,” Ershov suggested,
“a programmer must fi nd some system of inner values in his specialty,
values which can help him both to assimilate industrial methods and,
when necessary, to transcend them.” 20
At other points, of course, programmers were perfectly willing to lay
claim to the epistemological status of a fundamental science. The point
is that art and science were both rhetorical resources to be used in pursuit
of professional development and institution-building strategies. Like
Gieryn's Victorian scientists, programmers are able to endow their dis-
cipline with “just those characteristics needed to achieve professional and
institutional goals, and to change those attributed characteristics as cir-
cumstances warrant.” 21 Many of the apparent confl icts within program-
ming should be reevaluated within the context of discipline formation
and boundary work.
Despite the many differences in professional goals and theoretical
orientation that existed between the vocational programmers and the
academic computer scientists, the strength of their shared aesthetic values
and craft traditions provided a basis for community solidarity. Even at
the height of the software crisis, the average computer scientist had more
in common with the vocational programmer than they did with the mili-
tary and industrial managers. The software engineering movement failed
to provide adequate incentives to either of these groups, and therefore
failed to capture the full support of the majority of members of the pro-
gramming community.
The goal of boundary work is the establishment of professional iden-
tity, and the sociology of a profession's literature provides another useful
resource for interpreting the history of programming. During the 1950s
and 1960s, many white-collar occupations attempted to professionalize,
and computer programmers were no exception. 22 They established
professional societies, codes of ethics, and certifi cation and curriculum
standards. 23 Belonging to a profession provided an individual with a
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