Code Nation

Michael J. Halvorson

Description

Code Nation explores the rise of software development as a social, cultural, and technical phenomenon in American history. The movement germinated in government and university labs during the 1950s, gained momentum through corporate and counterculture experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, and became a broad-based computer literacy movement in the 1980s. As personal computing came to the fore, learning to program was transformed by a groundswell of popular enthusiasm, exciting new platforms, and an array of commercial practices that have been further amplified by distributed computing and the Internet. The resulting society can be depicted as a “Code Nation”—a globally-connected world that is saturated with computer technology and enchanted by software and its creation.

Code Nation is a new history of personal computing that emphasizes the technical and business challenges that software developers faced when building applications for CP/M, MS-DOS, UNIX, Microsoft Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and other emerging platforms. It is a popular history of computing that explores the experiences of novice computer users, tinkerers, hackers, and power users, as well as the ideals and aspirations of leading computer scientists, engineers, educators, and entrepreneurs. Computer book and magazine publishers also played important, if overlooked, roles in the diffusion of new technical skills, and this book highlights their creative work and influence.

Code Nation offers a “behind-the-scenes” look at application and operating-system programming practices, the diversity of historic computer languages, the rise of user communities, early attempts to market PC software, and the origins of “enterprise” computing systems. Code samples and over 80 historic photographs support the text. The book concludes with an assessment of contemporary efforts to teach computational thinking to young people.

• Acknowledgments


• How important is programming?


• Four computing mythologies


• FORTRAN, Logo, and the Tower of Babel


• Advocating computer literacy


• Four million BASIC programmers


• Power users, tinkerers, and gurus


• Hackers and cyberpunks


• Computer magazines and historical research


• Developing for MS-DOS: authors and entrepreneurs


• C programming nation: from Tiny C to Microsoft Windows


• “Evangelism is sales done right”: PCs and commercial programming culture


• Afterword: programming in the Internet age


• Index

Sujets

• Programming
• Computers
• Informatique
• General officer
• Computer programming
• General
• History
• Microsoft

Informations

• Publié par: Association for Computing Machinery and Morgan & Claypool Publishers
• Date de parution: 22 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781450377560
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

Code Nation
ACM Books
Editor in Chief
Sanjiva Prasad, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi
Founding Editor
M. Tamer Özsu, University of Waterloo
ACM Books is a series of high-quality books for the computer science community, published by ACM in collaboration with Morgan & Claypool Publishers. ACM Books publications are widely distributed in both print and digital formats through booksellers and to libraries (and library consortia) and individual ACM members via the ACM Digital Library platform.
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Code Nation
Personal Computing and the Learn to Program Movement in America
Michael J. Halvorson
Pacific Lutheran University
ACM Books #32
Copyright © 2020 by Association for Computing Machinery
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews—without the prior permission of the publisher.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks or registered trademarks. In all instances in which the Association of Computing Machinery is aware of a claim, the product names appear in initial capital or all capital letters. Readers, however, should contact the appropriate companies for more complete information regarding trademarks and registration.
Code Nation: Personal Computing and the Learn to Program Movement in America
Michael J. Halvorson
books.acm.org
http://books.acm.org
ISBN: 978-1-4503-7758-4 hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-4503-7757-7 paperback
ISBN: 978-1-4503-7756-0 EPUB
ISBN: 978-1-4503-7755-3 eBook
Series ISSN: 2374-6769 print 2374-6777 electronic
DOIs:
10.1145/3368274 Book
10.1145/3368274.3368282 Chapter 7
10.1145/3368274.3368275 Acknowledgments
10.1145/3368274.3368283 Chapter 8
10.1145/3368274.3368276 Chapter 1
10.1145/3368274.3368284 Chapter 9
10.1145/3368274.3368277 Chapter 2
10.1145/3368274.3368285 Chapter 10
10.1145/3368274.3368278 Chapter 3
10.1145/3368274.3368286 Chapter 11
10.1145/3368274.3368279 Chapter 4
10.1145/3368274.3368287 Afterword
10.1145/3368274.3368280 Chapter 5
10.1145/3368274.3368288 Index
10.1145/3368274.3368281 Chapter 6

A publication in the ACM Books series, #32
Editor in Chief: Sanjiva Prasad, IIT Delhi
Area Editor: Thomas Misa, University of Minnesota
This book was typeset in Arnhem Pro 10/14 and Flama using LuaTEX.
Cover image by vgajic/Collection E+ via Getty images
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
PART I LEARNING TO CODE
Chapter 1 How Important is Programming?
1.1 Programming Culture
1.2 Learning a Language
1.3 New Ways of Thinking
1.4 Equity and Access
1.5 Personal Connections
1.6 Manifestos of the Movement
1.7 A New History of Personal Computing
Chapter 2 Four Computing Mythologies
2.1 The NATO Conference on Software Engineering
2.2 The Complexity of Software
2.3 Systems are for Customers
2.4 The Counterculture Movement
2.5 Everything is Deeply Intertwingled
2.6 The Birth of Computer Science
2.7 Computers for the People
2.8 Personal Computing
Chapter 3 FORTRAN, Logo, and the Tower of Babel
3.1 Solving Problems with Computers
3.2 The Tower of Babel
3.3 High-level Languages
3.4 Learning FORTRAN
3.5 Daniel McCracken’s Primers
3.6 Seymour Papert and Logo
3.7 Cynthia Solomon
3.8 Logo as a Model for Code Nation
3.9 How successful was Logo?
Chapter 4 Advocating Computer Literacy
4.1 Robert Albrecht and the Popularization of the Movement
4.2 I Speak BASIC
4.3 The B. F. Skinner Approach
4.4 Hold Me Closer Tiny BASIC
4.5 Arthur Luehrmann and the Computer Literacy Debate
4.6 A Blow to the Movement
4.7 Apple Computer’s Education Agenda
4.8 Applications over Languages
Chapter 5 Four Million BASIC Programmers
5.1 Introducing David Ahl
5.2 A Proliferation of BASICs
5.3 IBM BASICA
5.4 Adventure Games
5.5 Structured Programming
5.6 Microsoft Press and Learn BASIC Now
5.7 Microsoft Game Shop
5.8 Visual Basic for Windows
5.9 Innovative Programming Primers
PART II HOBBYIST AND HACKER CULTURES
Chapter 6 Power Users, Tinkerers, and Gurus
6.1 Computing Terminology
6.2 Tinkering with Personal Computers
6.3 Van Wolverton and Batch Files
6.4 The DOS for Dummies Phenomenon
6.5 The Economic Impact of Personal Computers
6.6 Cary Lu