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Building the System/360 Mainframe Nearly Destroyed IBM

(spectrum.ieee.org)
169 points rbanffy | 2 comments | 08 Apr 25 07:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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EncomLab ◴[08 Apr 25 11:20 UTC] No.43620394[source]▶
Alan Kay has promulgated many famous truths about computer science - one of them being that among all fields of study, it has the least regard for the people and discoveries that brought it to where it is today. Maybe it's just my own sense of history as I move into my 4th and likely last decade of working with computers, but I find this to be both true and lamentable.

This was a great article - thanks for sharing!

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bluGill ◴[08 Apr 25 13:17 UTC] No.43621464[source]▶
How many of the people who made the steam engine possible do we remember? James Watt of course, but many many people were making contributions in material science, needed to make them useful. Not to mention many advances in values. No doubt lots of other areas as well, but I'm no expert in the steam engine.
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EncomLab ◴[08 Apr 25 15:03 UTC] No.43622617[source]▶
Not sure what you mean by this - it's not as if steam engines are an extensive technology today, and certainly no university is teaching "steam science", while nearly every school is teaching "computer science".

Perhaps this is just the attitude that drives Mr. Kay's point home - do individuals who are interested in CS have little value for who and what has come before them?

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1. nancyminusone ◴[08 Apr 25 17:14 UTC] No.43624114[source]▶
Sure they do, it's just called fluid dynamics and thermodynamics. Enough to fill up about 1/3 of a mechanical engineering degree, if you're really into it (most aren't).

Not that there's a lot of historical context to things as far as which people did what - most of that sort live on in names of techniques and methods (Rankine cycle, de Laval turbine, Carnot efficiency, etc.)

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2. bigger_cheese ◴[09 Apr 25 06:03 UTC] No.43629314[source]▶
I studied Materials Engineering. Similar experience.

Carnot, Thompson, Clausius, Gibbs, Rankine, Boltzman etc all made big historical contributions to modern understanding of Thermodynamics.

And for Fluid Dynamics: Euler, Bernoulli, Mach, Stokes and so on.

And if you are looking for someone more modern I'd say Ergun (Packed bed's, Fluidized Bed Reactors etc).

All builds upon "steam science"