|
|
|
|
|
|
by Natales
2429 days ago
|
|
|
I love the ACM and everyone trying to make the effort to preserve our history. I see it from the perspective of someone working at a fast-moving, Silicon Valley-based software vendor. In that context, I don't see a lot of appreciation for history, in the day-to-day basis. But it's not because people intrinsically don't care about it. It's more about our daily lives. We not only have to do what we all have to do, but we also have to keep up with the latest if we want to survive here. That line of thinking constantly pushes us forward, and doesn't reward looking at the past. |
|
|
If anything, the great speed of the industry's development has made it particularly concerned with its own history - things become history quickly, the principals are typically still around, etc. The ACM HOPL conference I mentioned started when high level languages had a total history of barely over 20 years. When McCarthy (who was surely also a very busy person) wrote his History of Lisp paper, Lisp was younger than Java is today. And as I said in a sibling comment, the interest extends far beyond industry participants - there are many popular accounts aimed at general audiences and many new ones are written at a seemingly increasing rate. There's a Computer History Museum which prides itself on its working exhibits right here in Silicon Valley. Industry history-related articles are hugely popular on HN - there's a couple of them on the front page right now.