Papers We Love Book Club: The Dawn of Software Engineering

Important: We're switching the meeting to Thursday to allow new members to attend. New day!

Papers We Love's book club has selected The Dawn of Software Engineering: from Turing to Dijkstra (http://www.lonelyscholar.com/dawn) as our next book.

On 27 September we'll discuss the interview with Peter Naur and the closing chapter of the book. It is not required to read the book before attending the group, but it's a good read and I think you'll like it!

Contrary to what many believe, Alan Turing’s legacy lies more in programming after his death than in computer building during his lifetime. Turing’s ‘universal machine’ helped programming language designers see the wood for the trees. Later, problems unsolvable with a computer influenced experienced programmers, including Edsger W. Dijkstra.Dijkstra’s pioneering work shows that both unsolvability & 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 history.How did the idea of machine independence enter the emerging field of software engineering? What does it have to do with logic? Daylight answers several such questions and discusses them with four Turing award winners: Hoare, Liskov, Wirth, and Naur.

Please consider joining us for lunch downtown and interesting conversation. See you there!