book announcement

Chapter 1 of Turing Tales

The first chapter of my 2016 book Turing Tales is made available here. I explain my methodological stance on the history of computer science, and introduce the topic of "conflations," which I believe is key to understanding the history of science and technology.

Knuth and P = NP

Dated: 

December 2014

New book: Algorithmic Barriers Falling: P=NP?  Just appeared!

From the preface:

The official site of ACM Turing Award winners describes Donald E. Knuth as the rare theoretician who writes many lines of code every day. His main life goal from the 1960s onwards is, in a nutshell, to nail the costs of computation down to the last penny.

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The Essential Knuth

Dated: 

August 2013

New book: The Essential Knuth.  Just appeared!

From the Preface:

Approaching him seemed impossible. I had to wait my turn. Swarmed by admirers, Donald E. Knuth was struggling not to spill his drink at a reception in honor of Alan M. Turing. The rain outside and the fact that it was a summer day (June 22, 2012) meant that we were somewhere in England.

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From Turing to Dijkstra, Part II

Dated: 

August 1971

In a previous post I scrutinized Moshe Y. Vardi's account of Church and Turing. During the past months I refined that post and added it to the first chapter of my recent book The Dawn of Software Engineering: from Turing to Dijkstra. I now present a summary of my book and briefly explain how Turing's work influenced Dijkstra's thinking. The book has just appeared in print.

Summary

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An interview with Peter Naur

Dated: 

Spring 2011

 

What an absolutely cool guy!

— Dennis Shasha,
New York University

 

Fascinating... the interview is a very worthwhile contribution to documenting the history of the field, and will be of strong interest both to computer scientists and to professional historians.

— Robert Harper,
Carnegie Mellon University

 

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