The Dawn of Software Engineering: from Turing to Dijkstra

by Edgar G. Daylight, Niklaus Wirth, Tony Hoare

Did Alan Turing play a major role in the advent of the all-purpose computer? Did Turing Award winners, like Edsger W. Dijkstra, depend on his famous accomplishments? In his well-researched book The Dawn of Software from Turing to Dijkstra , Edgar G. Daylight deromanticizes Turing's & logic's role in the history of computing. Dijkstra's pioneering work in compilers lies at the heart of modern-day computers. The book vividly describes how & why Dijkstra's ideas stood out among those of his contemporaries. This book includes interviews with Turing Award winners Tony Hoare, Niklaus Wirth, Peter Naur, and Barbara Liskov. “The Dawn of Software Engineering is a rich and fascinating account of the time when software engineering was a compelling intellectual discipline at the center of computer science.” — John C. Reynolds, CMU “wonderfully novel, very readable, and most engaging” — Grady Booch, IBM Fellow “a very deserving contribution to understanding the influence of fundamental results of science onto practice” — Manfred Broy, TUM

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Computer Science, Biography

248 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2012

Reviews

[Mauricio]

This is a great book, the author tries to determine how Turing influenced the work of Dijkstra, and other important computer scientists. Through that, Daylight comes to the conclusion that Turing's work is kind of "overrated" and people tend to make a hero of him, while not recognizing the true value of his work. Besides that point of view, this book is great for any computer scientist who wants to know more about the history of programming languages, recursion, compilers and operating systems.

[Alain van Hoof]

The interviews where te most interesting part of the book.

My dutch review:

http://www.computable.nl/artikel/revi...

[Michiel]

Interessant; maar moeilijk te lezen