UNIX history made easy

[John F. Haugh II]

In article <11239 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>The point is, if you don't know who Backus, Dijkstra, Hoare, Knuth,
>Thompson, Wirth, etc. are and what their major accomplishments were,
>you shouldn't advertise yourself as a professional computer scientist.

Why not?  Do I have to know that Alexander the Great's father is
the inventor of the Phillip's screwdriver to use one?

>I don't recall anybody (except possibly you) claiming that attending
>college courses in "computer science" sufficed to make one a computer
>scientist.

I'm only claiming that a course in The Great Names and Faces in
Computer History would be a waste of my time.

Sure, I knew what Backus did [ and I even know what to do with
it ].  But I don't need to know that he didn't play Thurston Howell III
on Gilligan's Isle.  I also know that a programmer who is going to
spend his entire life working in COBOL writing payroll programs
has no need for Backus' or Thompson's Greatest Hits.

Point is, to present a seemingly arbitrary list of computer greats
and claim this list is the basis for true computer professionalism
is pretty snooty.  Why is Thompson up there, for example, but
Ritchie isn't?  Go read that Turing Award paper again.  What has
Jensen been doing all these since he and Wirth worked on Pascal?
I know what Wirth has been doing and I'm not impressed.  As for
Dijkstra, I used 2 goto's just last week and exited at least one
loop in the middle.  Is he going to have me fired?

On the other hand, anyone who hasn't read ``The Mythical Man Month''
should be fired.  As arbitrary statements go, that's one I can
really believe in.
-- 
John F. Haugh II                        +-Things you didn't want to know:------
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