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Author Archives: Paul McJones
Chinese translation of Elements of Programming
In addition to the English, Japanese, and Russian editions, Elements of Programming is now available in a Chinese edition translated by Professor Qiu Zongyan (裘宗燕) of Peking University and published by China Machine Press. It’s interesting that every translation has … Continue reading
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More ALGOL history papers
As the ALGOL programming language enters its sixth decade, its interest to historians seems to be increasing. I’ve recently added additional citations to the “Papers on the history of ALGOL” section of the History of ALGOL web site: Edgar G. … Continue reading
Posted in FORTRAN, Software history
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Herbert Stoyan Collection finding aid and catalog online at CHM
In July 2010 I wrote about the collection of Lisp and artificial intelligence documents that Herbert Stoyan donated to the Computer History Museum. Today I’m glad to be able to announce that the finding aid is online at CHM and … Continue reading
Posted in LISP, Repositories
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Russian translation of Elements of Programming
In addition to the English and Japanese editions, Elements of Programming is now available in a Russian edition translated by Konstantin Ptitsyn (Константин Птицын) and published by Williams Publishing House. The publisher’s web page has links to booksellers.
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Edgar Daylight on Dijkstra
The latest addition to the “Papers on the history of ALGOL” section of the History of ALGOL web site is this paper about Dijkstra’s involvement in proposing and implementing the recursive procedure as an ALGOL 60 language construct: Edgar G. … Continue reading
Posted in ALGOL, Software history
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Vintage Computer Festival East 7.0
Evan Koblentz just sent me a link to the flyer for the Vintage Computer Festival East 7.0, which is scheduled for May 14-15, 2011, in Wall, New Jersey. Lectures in the mornings; exhibits in the afternoons; see the flyer for … Continue reading
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LISP historical archive web site reorganized
The History of LISP web site launched back in 2005 as a single web page running some 40 pages when printed; it covered many of the best known Lisp implementations. Over the years, the web site approximately doubled in size, … Continue reading
Posted in LISP, Software history
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Japanese translation of Elements of Programming
Elements of Programming is now available in a Japanese edition published by Pearson Kirihara and translated by Yoshiki Shibata. It is available via Amazon.jp.
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Elements of Programming video
On November 3, 2010, we presented a lecture on Elements of Programming to the Department of Electrical Engineering Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380) at the Stanford University. While we both take responsibility for the contents, Alex Stepanov lectured. A video of … Continue reading
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Robert L. Patrick on eMuseums
Bob Patrick is a friend of mine who entered the computer field in 1951, and whose hands-on experience running programs on an IBM 701 led him to conceive of the architecture for the General Motors/North American Monitor for the IBM … Continue reading
Posted in General, Oral history, Software history
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SDC: Q-32 Lisp, Lisp 2, and three more; Lisp 1.5 Primer
Lisp’s birth and infancy was at MIT, but it began spreading to other places when John McCarthy went to Stanford and other project members graduated and moved on. At about this time, a project began to develop a new language, … Continue reading
Posted in ALGOL, LISP
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Herbert Stoyan’s Lisp collection at CHM
Last winter Herbert Stoyan very generously donated to the Computer History Museum the extensive collection of Lisp and AI materials he assembled in the course of his extensive study of Lisp and its history: manuals, technical reports, papers, books, listings, … Continue reading
Posted in LISP, Repositories, Software history
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Bob Taylor on CHM’s YouTube channel
Bob Taylor was the featured guest at a recent Computer History Museum event: “Net@40: Robert W. Taylor in Conversation with Guy Raz”. The video of that event is now online. (See here and here for earlier postings about Bob on … Continue reading
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Whetstone ALGOL
Part of my motivation for starting on an ALGOL project was that Brian Randell recently obtained permission from the copyright holder to post an online copy of ALGOL 60 Implementation at CHM. This book, which he and Lawford Russell published … Continue reading
Posted in ALGOL, Simulators, Software history
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ALGOL
I recently created an ALGOL section at the Computer History Museum‘s Software Preservation Group web site, covering the language standardization efforts — for ALGOL 58 (also known as the International Algebraic Language), ALGOL 60, and ALGOL 68 — and also … Continue reading
Posted in ALGOL, Software history
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Don Chamberlin and the origin of SQL
Tonight Don Chamberlin will receive a 2009 Fellow Award of the Computer History Museum “for his fundamental work on structured query language (SQL) and database architectures”. The other awardees for 2009 are Robert R. Everett (M.I.T. Whirlwind and SAGE) and … Continue reading
Posted in General, Oral history, Software history
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Bob Taylor recognized by The University of Texas
Last month, Bob Taylor (the subject of a recent oral history) was recognized by The University of Texas. Bob received the Graduate School Outstanding Alumnus Award, a $100,000 Presidential Endowed Fellowship was established in his name, and he gave the … Continue reading
Posted in Oral history, Software history
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WIRED appreciates FORTRAN
WIRED‘s THIS DAY IN TECH feature for tomorrow is Oct. 15, 1956: Fortran Forever Changes Computing’s Fortunes. The article links to the Software Preservation Group FORTRAN web site and uses a photograph of John Backus and John Cocke from a … Continue reading
Elements of Programming
Elements of Programming, by Alexander Stepanov and Paul McJones, was published this month by Addison-Wesley Professional. From the preface: This book applies the deductive method to programming by affiliating programs with the abstract mathematical theories that enable them to work. … Continue reading
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