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History |
The history is one of our teachers1. The history of computers should teach us something. History should teach us something that we don't make the same mistakes and grow up.
But there some things to overcome:
"What you already know, hinders you from what I want you to know."
Most people believe they already know the truth about a subject, so they doesn't seek anymore at this place. Here is another problem.
"The stupid make always the same mistakes, the smart makes always new ones."
And if you are pride instead of humble, you stop seeking and learning, because you don't believe following.
"There is always a better way of doing something."
Really good computer scientists often describe themselves as humble. Humility is not a state where you lay down and let everyone walk over you. It's an attitude that you don't know everything yet and there's always something new to discover.
Studying history helps us understand how events in the past made things the way they are today. With lessons from the past, we not only learn about ourselves and how we came to be, but also develop the ability to avoid mistakes and create better paths for our societies.
10 Reasons to Study History at Oxford
- Learn with the world's experts. ...
- An exceptional education. ...
- Explore diverse histories. ...
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- Build skills for your future. ...
- Learn in amazing places. ...
- Be independent. ...
- Join a community of diverse historians.
Timeline of Programming Languages
- 1960 RISC
- 1980 Lisp Machine
Alan Kay, one of the developers of Smalltalk, did following statement:
"I made up the term 'object-oriented', and I can tell you I didn't have C++ in mind"
Object orientated thinking is a good thing, if you really understand it. But if you derive a class 20 times and collect more and more methods and end with a class that has a huge amount of methods, then propably you don't really understand the essence of object orientation. Jonathan Rees gave Paul Graham an interesting response about OO.
And this is what I see about Lisp:
"People don't like Lisp because of all the parentheses, because they don't understand why they're there"
In 2009, Sir Tony Hoare stated[14] that he invented the null reference in 1965 as part of the ALGOL W language. In that 2009 reference Hoare describes his invention as a "billion-dollar mistake":
I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965. At that time, I was designing the first comprehensive type system for references in an object oriented language (ALGOL W). My goal was to ensure that all use of references should be absolutely safe, with checking performed automatically by the compiler. But I couldn't resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years.