Thanks so much everyone - this was discussion was incredibly helpful. I did not expect so much behind my "little" question! Now, I've got plenty to get on with: trying Tom's approach, digging into Rachel's book chapter and getting a copy of Kim's Software–A Technical History when it lands. Best, Az On Mon, 6 Sep 2021, at 08:14, Pierre Mounier-Kuhn wrote:
A little obvious side-remark: "Clean" refers to the engineering side of computing – including programming. A mathematician's demonstration can be "beautiful" or "elegant" (or not), while an engine or a factory floor can be either clean or soiled with metal flakes and grease… Regards, Pierre Mounier-Kuhn
CNRS, Sorbonne Université & CentraleSupélec https://cnrs.academia.edu/PierreMounierKuhn http://laboutique.edpsciences.fr/produit/846/9782759818198/Histoire%20illust... http://www.rdv-histoire.com/mounier-kuhn-pierre-eric
----- Mail original ----- De: "Brian E Carpenter" <brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com> À: "members" <members@lists.sigcis.org> Envoyé: Lundi 6 Septembre 2021 07:50:40 Objet: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origins of "clean" code
Janet,
I think that "garbage collection" is so literally accurate that it isn't a metaphor. Or at least, if it's a metaphor, so are "word" and "program".
"Clean" seems to me very comparable with "beautiful" as used by theoretical physicists and mathematicians of the most elegant theories. (For example, nobody as far as I know thinks that the proofs of Fermat's Last Theorem or the Four Colour theorem are beautiful.) Definitely in the class of "I know it when I see it."
Dijkstra, by the way, in his famous "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" letter doesn't seem to use the word clean, but he does say that Go To is "an invitation to make a mess of one's program."
Regards Brian Carpenter
And let’s not forget “garbage collection”
Dr. Janet Abbate Professor, Science, Technology and Society Virginia Tech Co-director, VT National Capital Region STS program liberalarts.vt.edu/sts www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/stsconnect/
On Sep 4, 2021, at 8:53 AM, Rachel Plotnick <rachelplotnick2012@u.northwestern.edu> wrote:
Hi all,
I've been working on the question of cleanliness in computing for
Clean install Clean design Clean copy Clean room (physical and coding) Clean code Clean images Clean interface Clean the registry Disk Clean Up Dirty data Dirty PC (not vetted to be virus-free) Dirty download/dirty files Digital janitors Trash and recycling bin icons Computer virus Clean desktop/clutter Zero inbox
And there are likely many more examples. I'm also looking at how
questions of physical cleaning - of monitors, mouse, keyboard, desk, hard drive, disks - also take on great importance in computing. Some of my recent interest has been in the ways that clean room language came into conflict with computer rooms and then multi-purpose offices by challenging what human-machine hygiene meant. I've published a chapter in an edited volume, Computer Architectures, that provides some preliminary
This is a great question and I'm always happy to talk more about it and hear others' thoughts!
Regards, Rachel Plotnick Assistant Professor, Cinema and Media Studies Indiana University Bloomington raplotni@iu.edu
On Sat, Sep 4, 2021 at 12:16 AM Ben Peters <bjpeters@gmail.com> wrote: The excellent media historian Rachel Plotnick has done at least a talk
touching on “clean”:
https://www.blog.shanedenson.com/?p=5027
No doubt there are other resources as well,
Ben
Benjaminpeters.org
Sent from my iPhone
On Sep 3, 2021, at 19:24, MikeWillegal <mike@willegal.net> wrote:
I would suggest you review the many meanings of clean in a dictionary. Among them included in Merriam-Webster.com are …
1 b. free from contamination or disease 6 a. relatively free from error or blemish 7 a. characterized by clarity and precision
So I would suggest that regardless of the origin of usage of the
word clean in computer science, this adjective is, in fact, quite useful and appropriate. Of course, there are probably more cases than not where it could be argued whether a particular piece of code is clean or not. If there is a disagreement between observers, the substitution of a different adjective is not likely to change anybody’s opinion.
regards, Mike Willegal
On Sep 3, 2021, at 3:19 PM, Azhar Desai <mail@azh-r.com> wrote:
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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email
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On 05-Sep-21 10:50, Janet Abbate wrote: the past couple of years - and am now contextualizing it in a larger project on cleanliness and media technologies. I don't have a specific answer on the origin of "clean code," but my initial thought is that it fits into a much broader discourse about the ways that we talk about things being "clean" or "dirty" as a metaphor or skeuomorph in so many technological contexts. In the running list I've been keeping specifically for computing, I've documented: thoughts: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429264306-7/unclean-... the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
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