[SIGCIS-Members] My CACM column on "The Tears of Donald Knuth"

Thomas Haigh thaigh at computer.org
Wed Jan 14 09:59:07 PST 2015


Hello Everyone,

I thought you might be interested in my latest "Historical Reflections"
column in Communications of the ACM, titled "The Tears of Donald Knuth: Has
the History of Computing Taken a Tragic Turn?" (I thought about calling it
"Flow My Tears, The Computer Scientist Said," in honor of a 1970s Philip K.
Dick novel).
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-donald-knuth/fullte
xt 

The piece builds on SIGCIS list discussion from last summer, when the video
of Knuth's talk, "Let's Not Dumb Down the History of Computer Science" was
posted online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAXdDEQveKw). Knuth's talk
was, in turn, centered on his distress at reading Martin Campbell-Kelly's
paper "The History of the History of Software," which he saw as celebrating
a regrettable shift away from technical history of computing. Campbell-Kelly
recently published his own response to Knuth in IEEE Annals:
http://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/an/2014/03/man2014030096.pdf.

As a Ph.D. historian my natural sympathies are with the turn towards broader
historical approaches praised by Campbell-Kelly, but I have also come to
appreciate the value and rigor of more technical kinds of history (including
early programming tools and techniques by both Knuth and Campbell-Kelly). So
I attempted to be fair to both perspectives, while stressing that the
history of computer science accounts for a quite small proportion of the
work now being done on the history of computing. I also argue the realities
of academic society mean that the kinds of history favored by Knuth will
only flourish if computer scientists themselves make a significant
investment in historical work. Finally I took the opportunity to cite some
outstanding work on the history of computer science from the past two
decades and to publicize some current initiatives and new scholars in the
area. 

Such is the allure of Knuth's name that the column was seized on by tech
aggregation sites such as Slashdot, Hacker News, and Reddit when it first
appeared online over the Christmas break. It's also been tweeted and
blogged, and currently has about 75,000 downloads - more than the all the
other articles in the January CACM combined. I can't say that the online
discussions were uniformly well informed, although they do include some
thoughtful comments along with sentiments such as "Gawd academia disgusts
me. These "historians" would be more useful to society if they dug cans and
bottles out of the trash." Anything that makes more people think about the
history of computing and its purpose is a good thing for the field. 

I'd like to thank those who commented on drafts of the column, including Len
Shustek, Dave Walden, David Hemmendinger, Bill Aspray, Chuck House, and Paul
Fishwick. Not all of them agreed with all of my points, but I did find their
input very useful in sharpening the argument and presenting my thoughts in a
way less likely to unnecessarily offend computer scientists.

Best wishes for the New Year,

Tom




More information about the Members mailing list