The Dawn of Software Engineering: from Turing to Dijkstra - Softcover

Reseña del editor

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 Engineering: 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

Reseña del editor

Contrary to what many believe, Alan Turing is not the father of the all-purpose computer. Engineers were, independently of Turing, already building such machines during World War II. Turing's influence was felt more in programming after his death than in computer building during his lifetime. The first person to receive a Turing award was a programmer, not a computer builder. Logicians and programmers recast Turing's notions of machine and universality. Gradually, these recast notions helped programmers to see the bigger picture of what they were accomplishing. Later, problems unsolvable with a computer influenced experienced programmers, including Edsger W. Dijkstra. Dijkstra's pioneering work shows that both unsolvability and aesthetics have practical relevance in software engineering. But to what extent did Dijkstra and others depend on Turing's accomplishments? This book presents a revealing synthesis for the modern software engineer and, by doing so, deromanticizes Turing's role in the history of computing.