UNIX history made easy

[Don Libes]

In article <1218 at skye.ed.ac.uk> richard at aiai.UUCP (Richard Tobin) writes:
>In article <11239 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>>The point is, if you don't know who Backus, Dijkstra, Hoare, Knuth,
>>Thompson, Wirth, etc. are and what their major accomplishments were,
>>you shouldn't advertise yourself as a professional computer scientist.

>You certainly shouldn't call yourself a computer scientist if you don't
>understand the major principles expounded by these people, but to
>believe that knowledge of the people is important smacks of episodism.

I originally said that any computer scientist ought to know the Turing
award winners.  Hey, folks...I'm not talking biographies here.  I'm
talking familiarity with fundamental computer science literature!

If you don't know who Knuth is, you're telling me you are unaware of
an essential reference on algorithms.  If you don't know the name
Backus, you couldn't possibly know very much about language translation.
All of these names come up so frequently in references, or algorithm
names, that it is inescapable you become familiar with them.

I never meant to suggest that you had to read their biographies or
take a class in the subject.  Rather, such knowledge is simply an
inevitable part of learning the field of computer science.

Don Libes          libes at cme.nist.gov      ...!uunet!cme-durer!libes