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Programming Systems: in Search of Historical and Philosophical Foundations

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Reflections on Programming Systems

Part of the book series: Philosophical Studies Series ((PSSP,volume 133))

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the topics investigated in this book and it frames them in a broader historical and philosophical analysis of programming and computing technology.

Today we tend to go on for years, with tremendous investments to find that the system, which was not well understood to start with, does not work as anticipated. We build systems like the Wright brothers built airplanes—build the whole thing, push it off the cliff, let it crash, and start over again.

(Graham, in Software Engineering and Society, Naur and Randell 1968.)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is a long standing issue in computing, touching on several areas. One of the early and most broad views on computing, risk and trust can be found in MacKenzie (2004). Recently, the area of computational trust has grown sensibly in its impact and applications, from software packages distribution systems to vehicular networks, see e.g. Primiero and Boender (2017) and Primiero et al. (2017) for some approach and overviews of the related literatures. For a high-level commentary on trust of digital technologies, see Taddeo (2017).

  2. 2.

    The issue of algorithm accountability is gaining much traction, especially in view of current progress in AI. For a recent high-level analysis of the problem, see Diakopoulos and Friedler (2016). For contributions concerning the debate on the ethical relevance of algorithms in terms of accountability and their public impact, see Mittelstadt et al. (2016) and Binns (2017).

  3. 3.

    Quoted in Chafkin (2017).

  4. 4.

    See Grier (1996). Obviously, an ENIAC program is something quite different from a program expressed in a high-level language. See Haigh et al. (2016) for a different approach in which one starts from a generic definition of ‘program’ (as a ‘sequencing of operations’), and a ‘modern program’ is rooted in the ENIAC machine and the EDVAC design.

  5. 5.

    More particularly, the approach taken by von Neumann was the identification of different steps in the preparation and set-up of a problem—a kind of division of labor—where the most prominent stage is that in which the ‘dynamics’ of a program is captured by means of a flowchart. The other is due to Curry, who focussed on the automation of the coding process and developed a logic for program compositionality. See De Mol et al. (2015) for a partial comparison between the two approaches.

  6. 6.

    It should be added that this is the standard narrative. Of course, there were many variants on the EDVAC design and also entirely different designs such as that for the Whirlwind which was not serial. See also Backus (1978) for a critical discussion of the von Neumann method.

  7. 7.

    There are different understandings of the origins of the stored-program concept, its intellectual lineage and its historical implementation and understanding. See Haigh et al. (2014) and Copeland and Sommaruga (2015) for two different interpretations.

  8. 8.

    See for instance the development of microprogramming which is basically an approach to hardware programming (Wilkes and Stringer 1953, p. 230): “This paper describes a method of designing the control circuits of a machine which is wholly logical and which enables alterations or additions to the order code to be made without ad hoc alterations to the circuits” De Mol et al. (2017) discusses several machines, some of which fit into the microprogramming strategy, that stick close to the hardware and develop optimum coding techniques such as latency and underwater programming.

  9. 9.

    Daylight (2015), for instance, discusses the approach of the so-called ‘space cadets’. See also Nofre et al. (2014) for a discussion of the use of the notion of language in this context.

  10. 10.

    See Hopper (1980) for a personal account of that development.

  11. 11.

    See Mahoney (2008) for a historical take on this wordplay.

  12. 12.

    See Haigh (2010) and Ensmenger (2010) for two different interpretations of the impact of the so-called software crisis.

  13. 13.

    During a talk titled Fundamental concepts of programming languages given at the International Summer School in Computer Programming in Copenhagen, in August 1967, (Strachey 1967).

  14. 14.

    Which is basically the ‘worse is better’ philosophy. See also Chap. 6.

  15. 15.

    For historical works, see Brennecke and Keil-Slawik (2002) and Hashagen et al. (2002). For computer science works, see Tanenbaum (2008) and Silberschatz et al. (2011); for a philosophical approach to software with some aspects related to systems, see Berry (2011).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS, UMR 8163 Savoirs, Textes, Langage, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France

    Liesbeth De Mol

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Milan, Milano, Italy

    Giuseppe Primiero

Authors
  1. Liesbeth De Mol
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  2. Giuseppe Primiero
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Correspondence to Liesbeth De Mol .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS, UMR 8163 Savoirs, Textes, Langage, Villeneuve d‘Ascq, France

    Liesbeth De Mol

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Giuseppe Primiero

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De Mol, L., Primiero, G. (2018). Programming Systems: in Search of Historical and Philosophical Foundations. In: De Mol, L., Primiero, G. (eds) Reflections on Programming Systems. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 133. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97226-8_1

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