September 2021 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Alvy Ray Smith's "The Biography of the Pixel"
by Brian Randell 07 Sep '21

07 Sep '21

Hi: I strongly recommend Alvy Ray Smith's "The Biography of the Pixel", just published by MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/biography-pixel Amazon has only two reviews as yet , but both are informative, well-argued and very enthusiastic: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Biography-Pixel-Leonardo-Alvy-Smith/dp/0262542455/… I have to declare an interest - I was consulted for the section of the book on the early history of digital computers, and am listed in the acknowledgements. However only now have I seen the whole book, and I am *very* impressed. I attach, as a small sample of the book, a scan of three pages from the Introduction. I'm still in the middle of reading the book myself, but I think it's terrific - I agree with every word of the two (at time of writing) Amazon reviews (by Potash and McGee). Cheers Brian Randell -- From the Introduction "Beginnings: A Signal Event": Even as late as 1800, just two centuries ago, a picture of Napoleon crossing the Alps AND the canvas on which Jacques-Louis David painted it AND the oil paints he used were an integral unit. Imagine that you wanted to share Napoleon's delightfully hagiographic picture (figure 0.2) in Europe with a friend in New York. There were no cellphones or video cameras yet, not even such a thing as a photograph. The only way to display him in New York was to transport the one physical painting there-if you dared. An engraving, etching, or sketch might help, but those were only better or worse copies--new images that would never fully and faithfully capture the original. Through all that time a painting and its medium of creation were inseparable. No one even conceived of separating the two. What could a picture be, independent of its medium? Then in the early nineteenth century photography was invented, ushering in the world of what we now call "the media." Faithful reproduction was upon us. Movies followed in the late nineteenth century and television in the early twentieth. All media then were analog smooth and continuous. And a picture could be transferred from one medium to another a hint that something, after all, about a picture floats separate from its medium. The notion of the digital discrete and spiky-didn't fully exist until 1933. At midcentury, 1950, there were only a couple of digital pictures in existence. The few people who knew about them actually thought they were frivolous distractions from the more serious projects of digital computers. All the other pictures in the world were made and viewed with analog means-oil on canvas, ink on paper, and chemical emulsion on photographic film, to name a few. But at the millennium, 2000, there was an unheralded event--the Great Digital Convergence: a single new digital medium-the all-encompassing bit replaced nearly all analog media. The bit became the universal medium, and the pixel--a particular packaging of bits conquered the world. It became possible to remove a painting, so to speak, from its canvas. As a consequence, most pictures in the world are now digital. Analog pictures have all but vanished relative to ubiquitous digital imagery. Museums and kindergartens are among the few reliable places to find the analog. This book heralds that signal millennial event by celebrating Digital Light - the vast realm that includes any picture, for any purpose, made from pixels. It extends from parking meters to virtual reality, from dashboards to digital movies and television, from CAT scans to videogames to cellphone displays, and many, many more--anything mediated by pixels. What's puzzling about the new medium is that you can't see it. Bits, and pixels made of bits, are invisible. Pixels are not to be confused, as they often are, with the little glowing areas on a screen, called display elements. The technical heart of this book is the explanation of how to make pictures composed of invisible stuff visible-how to convert digital pixels to analog display elements. That the Great Digital Convergence happened at the millennium was just a coincidence, but a convenient one. Pixar released the first digital movie, Toy Story, in 1995. The first broadcast of the new high-definition television (HDTV) signal was in 1998. A digital camera of sufficient quality to threaten film cameras astonished the market in 1999. The digital video disc, or DVD, debuted in 2000. Apple introduced the ubiquitous iPhone in 2007. What had been ink and paper, photographs, movies, and television became-in a blink of the historical eye-just bits. The change was so fast that young people today may have never experienced non-digital media-outside those last bastions of the analog: art museums and preschools. We are all now aswim in an ocean of pixels. carry billions of them on my person, and I suspect that you do too. But curiously there's been little serious notice taken of this pervasive change in our daily experience. Perhaps this is because most people haven't realized that Digital Light is single unified technology. The notion is new. Making it clear is a major purpose of this book. Foundations: Three Great Ideas Just three ideas-waves, computations, and pixels underlie all the apparent complexity of Digital Light. Each idea is intuitively simple, profound, and beautiful. These are the technological cornerstones of our modern world, and you don't need mathematics to understand them. The first three chapters (part I of this book) present these foundational ideas with the surprising and fascinating stories of the people who made them possible. Waves are an analog idea. You probably know that music is made of simultaneous sound waves of different frequencies (pitches) and amplitudes (loudnesses). Two centuries ago the Frenchman Joseph Fourier extended that notion to all our sensory experience. Everything we see and hear is a sum of waves. It's all music. In this book I show you how to see the music in a visual scene. Computers are a digital idea. Machines that make computations go fast are the very exemplars of the digital in ordinary life. But the idea of computation dates back only to 1936 when the Englishman Alan Turing invented it to capture the notion of a careful, precise process. That might sound plodding and boring, but the consequences are anything but. Computers are humankind's most malleable tool. And their awesome speed is the most consequential engineering miracle of all time. With that speed, computers amplify what we puny humans can do by unimaginable amounts. But all of the mind-boggling, world-changing power of computers really reduces to a careful flipping between two states, often named 0 and 1. Computation is all bits. That may sound trivial, but I hope to inspire you with the unexpected beauty--and mystery--inherent in computation. Again, no mathematics required. The most important but least known of the three fundamental ideas is the underlying theme of this book: you can pass back and forth between waves and bits - between the analog and digital worlds. The idea dates back only to 1933 when the Russian Vladimir Kotelnikov established it as we know it today. Its formal name is the Sampling Theorem. This entire book-being a biography of the pixel, with pixel being our name for a sample of the visual world - is about sampling. Pixels are invisible bits that represent visible waves. My fervent intent is that you understand this piece of magic and be amazed by how it works. No mathematics is required here either. Now that I've said no math required three times in two pages, you might be thinking: But what if some of us care about the math? For you - but really for all my readers - I provide an online annotations site at http://alvyray.com/DigitalLight/. There you will find additional details about people, places, and events that would have made this book too unwieldy to fit between its physical covers and you will find as well mathematical equations to support the magic of Digital Light and the pixels that make it possible. There's a common misconception that a pixel is a little square of color. But in fact, the pixel is a profound and abstract concept that binds our modern media world together. It's the organizing principle of Digital Light. A visual scene consists of an infinite number of points of color. Infinite is, by definition, too large to deal with. So how can we replace a smooth visual scene with only a finite number of discrete bits the pixels - and not lose an infinity of information between them? The Sampling Theorem tells us how to do it. It's the secret that makes the modern media world work. Sampling, which depends on Fourier's waves, was created almost simultaneously with computation in the mid-1930s. Sampling met computation and conceived a child, Digital Light, the subject of this book. — School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/brianrandell.htm — School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/brianrandell.html

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Query about invention of wired networking
by Douglas Lucas 07 Sep '21

07 Sep '21

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Origins of "clean" code
by Azhar Desai 06 Sep '21

06 Sep '21

Hi SIGCIS, I'm a software engineer, who reads & relies some of your work, to help make sense of working in the astonishingly ahistorical tech sector - so thank you! I'm interested in the origins of the word "clean" in software design. In conversations about software, people might often prefer some code over another, arguing that it's "cleaner". An example from a 2020 paper on the implementation of a VPN in Linux: > While the Linux kernel’s crypto API has a large collection of primitives... ultimately, using raw primitives with direct, non-abstracted APIs proved to be far cleaner [1] The most famous example is the eponymously titled book "Clean Code" (2008) which proposes snippets of code that are ostensibly always preferred. Does anyone know where I might find out how the word "clean" came to be used like this in software? My reasons for asking are somewhat impure: I'm trying to discourage this not very meaningful word in favour of more precise language. One of the earliest uses I've seen of "clean" is in one of Djikstra's notes from 1974 [2] on a design for arrays in response to how ALGOL 60 had it. [2] But I have no idea if it was in common use then, or had always been in the development of programming languages at least. I'd love to hear any thoughts. Best, Az [1] https://www.wireguard.com/papers/wireguard.pdf [2] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd04xx/EWD417.PDF

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Query about invention of wired networking
by Douglas Lucas 03 Sep '21

03 Sep '21

Hi SIGCIS-Members, I just wanted to thank everyone I didn't get a chance to respond to earlier for their very helpful and thought-provoking posts in reply to my query. Pierre Mounier-Kuhn, thanks for the reference to FH Raymond's memoirs published in 1989 in the _Annals of the History of Computing_ ("SEA: An Adventure with a Sad Ending"). I also really like the subsidiary questions you posed regarding theoretical work: To what extent were theoretical studies of digital networks extensions of studies about data flows within a computer (queuing problems, etc.), and what were the radically novel problems raised by digital network design? Allan Olley, thanks for pointing to the two fiction works ("A Logic Named Joe" and 1954's _Year of Consent_), plus the mention of WWII tech of converting punch cards into teletype. Brian Berg, thanks for the link to the IEEE Milestone proposal for the SSEM with all the detailed documentation. Emily Goodmann, thanks for the reference to the 1934 John Mills article "Communication with Electrical Brains" in _Bell Telephone Quarterly_. Brian E Carpenter, thanks for the pointer to Williams and Kilburn's 1948 letter to _Nature_. Willard McCarty, thanks for all the great citations. Marc Weber, thanks for the link to the Computer History Museum's "Revolution" exhibition and Jim Pelkey's _History of Computer Communications_ (currently being updated). Doug

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From Yesterday to Tomorrow: 60 years of tech in New Zealand
by Janet Toland 03 Sep '21

03 Sep '21

I would like to let you know about a book I edited for the 60th anniversary of Information Technology Professionals New Zealand, to celebrate the history of computing in New Zealand. It consists of 37 chapters covering different aspects of the development of computing written by experts in the field. The book incorporates two previous books, "Looking Back to Tomorrow", written for the 25th Anniversary in 1985 and "Return to Tomorrow", written for the 50th anniversary in 2010. Check out the website for a full chapter list https://shop.itp.nz/#!product/395 The book can be read online at the following link https://history.itp.nz/ Regards Janet Dr Janet Toland Associate Professor in Information Systems Victoria University of Wellington/ Te Herenga Waka

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Giving away a lot of classic CS books
by Brian Randell 01 Sep '21

01 Sep '21

Hi: Seen on another list. Cheers Brian Randell ---- On 01/09/2021, 01:24, "SIGCSE Member Forum on behalf of Michael Feldman" <SIGCSE-MEMBERS(a)LISTSERV.ACM.ORG on behalf of 0000067722cb92ec-dmarc-request(a)LISTSERV.ACM.ORG> wrote: Dear Colleagues, I hope you are all well and ready for the fall term, whatever it might bring in these uncertain times. My wife Ruth and I are moving from Portland to Berkeley in the near future; our new flat will have many advantages, but alas, not nearly enough space for all our books, papers, and media. I'm writing in the hope of finding new homes for (i.e. giving away) any or all of my large collection of books on computing. Through a decade of graduate school and three decades of teaching CS, I accumulated a trove of "classic" books in this discipline, starting in the 60s and including well-known works by Dijkstra, Wirth, Brooks, Brinch Hansen, Minsky, Wiener, Gries, Kernighan, Stroustrup, Knuth, McCluskey, McCracken, Leveson, Shneiderman, Perlis, Sammet, Ullman, and many more -- 143 in all. The list is included below. Please email me if you're interested in any of these. Ruth has very kindly offered to work with you on the shipping logistics; we ask only that you reimburse us for the shipping costs. Book dealers don't usually have the understanding or respect for the content of these books, so they have little to no sale value. But they might well have real value to people like SIGCSE members who know the field. Unfortunately, I fear my options might come down to saying farewell to these treasures on their way to the landfill. Best regards, Michael Feldman Professor Emeritus of Computer Science The George Washington University Washington, DC 20052 mfeldman(a)gwu.edu ========== Classic Books on Computer Science =========== Abd-Alla, A.M. and A.C. Meltzer. Principles of Digital Computer Design. (1976) Abelson, H., G.J. Sussman, J. Sussman. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1985) Abrahams, P. TeX for the Impatient. (1990) Adler, I. Thinking Machines (1961) Aho, A. and J. Ullman. Foundations of Computer Science (1992) Aho, A., J. Hopcroft, and J. Ullman. Data Structures and Algorithms (1983) Alagic, S. and M.A. Arbib. The Design of Well-Structured and Correct Programs (1978) Arbib, M.A. Computers and the Cybernetic Society (1977) Barron, D.W. Pascal: the Language and Its Implementation (1981) Baumann, R., et al. Introduction to Algol (1964) Bavel, Z. Math Companion for Computer Science (1982) Bearden, D. et al. The Turtle's Sourcebook (1983) Bell System Technical Journal. The UNIX System (Oct 1984) Bell System Technical Journal. UNIX Time-Sharing system (July-Aug 1978) Bellman, R. Artificial Intelligence: Can Computers Think? (1978) Ben-Ari, M. et al. Foundations of Computer Science (vols 1 and 2, in Hebrew) (1997) Ben-Ari, M. Understanding Programming Languages (1996) Berkeley, E. The Computer Revolution (1962) Booth, T. Sequential Machines & Automata Theory (1967) Boszormenyi, L. and C. Weich. Programming in Modula-3 (1996) Bowles, K. Problem Solving Using Pascal (1977) Bowles, K.L. Beginner's Guide for the UCSD Pascal System (1980) Brinch Hansen, P. Programming a Personal Computer (1982) Brix, V.H. You Are a Computer (1970) Brooks, F. P. The Mythical Man-Month (1995) Brooks, F.P. and K.E. Iverson. Automatic Data Processing (1963) Brown, G.D. System 370 Job Control Language (1977) Burks, A.W. Essays on Cellular Automata (1970) Buxton, J.N. and B. Randell. NATO Conference on Software Engrg Techniques (1970) Carman, R.A. A Programmed Intro to Vectors (1963) Carney, J.D. and R.K. Scheer. Fundamentals of Logic (1964) Chapin, N. An Intro to Automatic Computers 2e (1963) Churchill, R.V. Complex Variables and Applications, 2nd ed. (1960) Clement, P.R. and W.C. Johnson. Electrical Engineering Science (1960) Coffman, E.G., and P.J. Denning, Operating Systems Theory (1973) Coleman, D. A Structured Programming Approach to Data (1979) Corliss, W.R. Computers (1967) CRC Standard Mathematical Tables (1959) Dept. of the Army Log and Math Tables (1956) Dijkstra, E.W. A Discipline of Programming (1976) Dijkstra, E.W., ed. Formal Development of Programs and Proofs (1990) Feigenbaum, E.A. and J. Feldman. Computers and Thought (1963) Feuer, A., and N. Gehani. Comparing and Assessing Programming Languages (1984) Finkbeiner, D.T. Intro to Matrices and Linear Transformations (1960) Foley, J.D. and A. van Dam. Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics (1983) Forsythe, G.E. et al., Computer Methods for Mathematical Computations (1977) Geller, D.P. and D.P. Freedman. Structured Programming in APL (1976) Gilb, T. Software Metrics (1977) Gimpel, J.F. Algorithms in SNOBOL4 (1976) Greenberg, S. GPSS Primer (1972) Gregory, R.H. and R.L. van Horn. Business Data Processing and Programming (1963) Gries, D. Compiler Construction for Digital Computers (1971) Griswold, R.E. and M.T. Griswold. A SNOBOL4 Primer (1973) Griswold, R.E. String and List Processing in SNOBOL4 (1975) Griswold, R.E. The Macro Implementation of SNOBOL4 (1972) Griswold, R.E., et al. The SNOBOL4 Programming Language, 2e (1971) Halmos, P. Naive Set Theory (1960) Harary, F. Graph Theory (1969) Harel, D. Algorithmics. (1987) Harrison, M.A. Intro to Switching and Automata Theory (1965) Heller, R.S. and C.D. Martin, Alef Basic (1983) Heller, R.S., C.D. Martin, and J.L. Wright, LogoWorlds (1985) Hertzfeld, A. Revolution in the Valley (2005) Higman, B. A Comparative Study of Programming Languages (1967) Hoffman, L.J. Modern Methods for Computer Security and Privacy (1977) Holt, R.C. and J.N.P. Hume. Turing Programming Language (1983) Holt, R.C. Concurrent Euclid, The UNIX System, and Tunis (1983) Hopgood, F.R.A. Compiling Techniques (1969) Hughes, J.K. PL/I Structured Programming (1979) IBM Self-Study Course Principles of Programming (1961) Ingerman, P.Z. A Syntax-Oriented Translator (1966) James, G. and R.C. James. Mathematics Dictionary (1959) Kaufman, R. A Fortran Coloring Book (1979) Kernighan, B.W. and P.J. Plauger. Software Tools (1976) Kernighan, B.W. and P.J. Plauger. The Elements of Programming Style 2e (1978) Kleene, S.C. Mathematical Logic (1967) Knuth, D. E. The Art of Computer Programming, vol. 1 (1973) Knuth, D. E. The Art of Computer Programming, vol. 2 (1973) Knuth, D. E. The Art of Computer Programming, vol. 3 (1973) Knuth, D.E. Surreal Numbers (1974) Kuo, S. Assembler Language (1974) Ledgard, H. (ed.) The American Pascal Standard (1984) Ledgard, H. et al. Programming Proverbs, 5 vols (1975-1978-1979-1978-1975) Lee, J.A.N. The Anatomy of a Compiler. (1967) Leveson, N.G. Safeware (1995) Lewis, P.M., et al. Compiler Design Theory (1976) Linger, R.C., H.D. Mills, and B.I. Witt. Structured Programming Theory and Practice (1979) Mager, R.F. Preparing Instructional Objectives (1962) McCarthy, J. et al. LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual (1966) McCluskey, E.J. Intro to the Theory of Switching Circuits (1965) McCracken, D.D. Digital Computer Programming (1957) Mendenhall, W. Introto Probability & Statistics 2e (1967) Meyer, B. Object-Oriented Software Construction (1988) Milner, W. Common Lisp: a Tutorial (1988) Minsky, M. and S. Papert. Perceptrons (1972) Minsky, M. Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines (1967) Mowshowitz, A. Inside Information; Computers in Fiction (1977) Myers, G.J. Composite/Structured Design (1978) Newman, J.R. The World of Mathematics, vols. 1-4 (1956) Newman, W.M., and R.F. Sproull. Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics (1973) Niguidula, D.A. and A. van Dam. Pascal on the Macintosh (1987) Organick, E.I. and J.A. Hinds. Interpreting Machines. (1978) Organick, E.I. Computer System Organization - the B5700/B6700 series (1973) Pattis, R.E. et al. Karel the Robot (1981) Pattis, R.E. et al. Karel the Robot, 2nd ed. (1995) Paulman, J. Fundamentals of APL Programming (1976) Perlis, A.J. Introduction to Computer Science (1975) Randell, B. and L.J. Russell. Algol 60 Implementation (1964) Rosen, S. Programming Systems and Languages. (1967) Rustin, R. Courant Computer Science Symposia (1971-1970-1973-1972) Salisbury, A. Microprogrammable Computer Architectures (1976) Salus, P. ed. Handbook of Programming Languages vol. 2-3-4 (1998) Sammet, J.E. Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals (1969) Scientific American, Automatic Control (1955) Sedgewick, R. Algorithms, 2nd ed. (1988) Shannon, C.E. and J. McCarthy, eds. Automata Studies (1956) Shneiderman, B. Designing the User Interface (1987) Simon, H.A. The Sciences of the Artificial (1969) Sippl, C.J. and D.A. Kidd. Microcomputer Dictionary and Guide (1975) Software Practice & Experience, 10 issues 1981-1983 (MBF article in Jan. 81) Storey, N. Safety-Critical Computer Systems (1996) Tanenbaum, A.S. Operating Systems Design & Implementation (1987) Tanenbaum, A.S. Structured Computer Organization (1976) Taube, M. Computers and Common Sense (1961) Thomas, G.B. Calculus and Analytic Geometry (3rd ed) (1960) Trakhtenbrot, B.A. Algorithms and Automatic Computing Machines (1963) Ullman, J.D. Principles of Database Systems (1980) various early 80s computer mags (early C-64 and Mac stuff, etc.) Waite, W.M. Implementing Software for Non-Numeric Applications (1973) Wegner, P. An Introduction to Symbolic Programming (1963) Wegner, P. Programming Languages, Information Structures, and Machine Organization (1968) Wiener, N. Cybernetics (1961) Wiener, N. The Human Use of Human Beings (1967) Williams, J.D. The Compleat Strategyst (1966) Wirth, N. Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs (1976) Wirth, N. Algorithms and Data Structures (1986) Wirth, N. Compiler Construction (1996) Wirth, N. Programming in Modula-2, 2nd ed. (1983) Wirth, N. Programming in Modula-2, 3rd ed. (1985) Yeh, R.T. Current Trends in Programming Methodology vols. 1-4 (1978) Yourdon, E. and L. Constantine. Structured Design (1979) Yourdon, E. Techniques of Program Structure and Design (1975) Zelkowitz, M.V. et al. Principles of Software Engineering and Design (1979) ========== — School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/brianrandell.html

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