Software Engineers Are the Heroes of New Computer History Museum Exhibit (ieee.org) 115
Tekla Perry writes: The Computer History Museum set out to turn the spotlight on software engineers and show how they are the changing the world. But what projects to feature in the new, permanent exhibit [called "Make Software: Change the World!"] (that opens to the public this Saturday, January 28th)? The curators whittled a list of 100 technologies that owe their existence to breakthroughs in software down to seven: Photoshop, the MP3, the MRI, car crash simulation, Wikipedia, texting, and World of Warcraft. They expect these choices to be debated at length, in particular, World of Warcraft, but hope the exhibition elevates the prominence of software engineers and gets more than a few middle schoolers talking about targeting their career plans in that direction.
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For example, the AGC Apollo Guidance Computer [github.com] springs to mind as a world-changing piece of code.
(Link is to the original Apollo 11 guidance computer (AGC) source code for Command Module (Comanche055) and Lunar Module (Luminary099).)
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Digital compressors and filters (Score:2)
The development of digital compressors and filters would be the bare tech at the heart of MPEG and all that followed. And that'll cover all modems too.
Separating hardware from software becomes difficult.
Re: Digital compressors and filters (Score:2)
Modems aren't compressors, and filters are radically different from compression algorithms. Modems use filters, but also do other things, such as (nowadays) forward error correction. Speaking of which: Computationally efficient, near-Shannon-limit codes are another truly impressive development in tech.
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MP3 doesn't even belong because the research to develop it was done by one inventor working alone on his PhD dissertation while listening to a song on the radio. There wasn't a social team of socializing socialites behind it. Not social enough for the social era. Remove it from the museum.
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You mean like a railroad engineer? (American and Canadian) which is an engine driver, train driver, train operator (British and Commonwealth English); a person who operates a train.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It just come from "engine-man" but "engineer" sure sounds more important.
It still has nothing to do with what a real engineer is but nowadays, everybody is an engineer so there is no discrimination I guess ;-)
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lol:
In Canada, locomotive drivers have a site named "Ingénieurs de locomotives". As my OP link stated, apparently, only in Canada and US do they call train drivers "engineer" so I am not to sure about your English language specific stuff..
http://cpest.teamsterscanada.c... [teamsterscanada.ca]
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I understand software and engineering quite well, and I use the title.
I'm surprised I don't. I have a MSEE and I was employed as an EE for 14 years up until August. Now my title is "Programmer." I would have preferred "Software Engineer" for resume purposes, but "Programmer" fits just fine. At least it would if I was a capable programmer.
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You beat me to it. Around here the real engineers guard their title quite ferociously. Unless you are currently licensed to practice, you had best not be caught using the "e-word". I never could understand why someone would want to claim they were something that they weren't. Sort of like the sad bastards that claim to veterans when they've never served.
You can now get a degree in Software Engineering here but I understand it is basically an electrical engineering degree with a specialization in sof
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A regular CS degree may not be the same as a SE degree, but some of them are accredited for receiving the title of "real engineer". For example, the British Computer Society accredits various CS degrees for the Chartered Engineer qualification, and since that's homologised across the EU there must be similar accreditation in other European countries.
They forgot compilers (Score:4, Interesting)
Without these NONE of the above would have happened. Good luck programming any of them in assembler.
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But everything should be rewritten in Fatwa^H^H^H^H^HJavaScript! Apps!
Re:They forgot compilers (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the reason they didn't mention compilers, and OSes for that matter is that they limited themselves to things that are actually useful for the end user, not what lie behind it.
All examples are the visible part of different kinds of underlying technologies. It is actually a pretty good list as they managed to represent a wide variety of technology with a wide variety of applications.
The choice of World of Warcraft is a particularly good one IMHO. Video games are a major component of the history of computing and it is important to include something to represent this industry. WoW is a very successful game made by a very successful company and so, a good representative. There is also a wide array of technologies behind it. It is a realtime 3D game with all that implies in term of computer imaging and GPU development, it also has a complex network architecture behind it, with game servers, database servers, load balancing, etc... Being a paid game with a subscription, it even dips into eCommerce.
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WoW is neither the first of its kind nor the best, its just arguably the most popular. Yes, there's a lot of infrastructure behind it but there's just as much behind the till you buy your groceries at. So what. If they want to represent videogames then pong, space invaders, pacman or even Doom would have been far more appropriate.
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At one point compilers and OSes were the things used by the end-user. The very definition of an operating system is a kernel, standard library and compiler. This means that for most of its history Microsoft did not actually sell a actual computer operating system by definition. But for many users their computer is just their
As long as they don't include Steve Jobs (Score:2)
I'll only take this exhibition seriously if it has something on Woz and nothing on the "genius" Steve Jobs for a change.
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All of these (except MRI) are the Steve Jobs of software, they are the secondary popular copy of someone else's original idea
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Agreed. Though, these are only going to be the big sexy projects that everyone can recognize.
Something tells me that fundamental network protocols, text editors, command line tools, file systems and so on will not be mentioned.
It's always the rock stars that get all the attention even though they inevitably rely on a million work horses behind the scenes to achieve their popularity.
BSOD (Score:2)
What a load of crock (Score:4, Interesting)
Software that changed the world? World of Warcraft is a game, what about pageranking and crawling? Where's the search engines?
Why is a patent encumbered music compression format on the list, did music not get shared before it? I mean the most popular online music shops don't use that format, neither does digital radio. Why MP3 and not AAC, and isn't MP3 just a succession of a previous format and one that is under constant redevelopment?
On that list, Photoshop, MRIs and Wikipedia deserve the place. The rest should get the curators fired.
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Why is a patent encumbered music compression format on the list, did music not get shared before it?
You've answered your own question, the answer is yes. The introduction of the MP3 format directly led to the explosive growth of music sharing online. Before MP3 in the bad old days WAV was about it, and even relatively small audio clips were far too large to store or transfer many of.
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The MP3 file didn't create the phenomenon of sharing music. There were other competing formats at the time. MP3 just happened to be the one that everyone latched on to. I remember downloading music in many other formats including RealAudio [wikipedia.org], TwinVQ [wikipedia.org], MP2 [wikipedia.org], OGG [wikipedia.org], and WMA [wikipedia.org]. The home internet connection itself let to the explosive growth of music sharing online. The format didn't really matter all that much, and without MP3, another of the available formats would have easily taken its place.
Early Winamp (Score:2)
Early Winamp was what made the mp3 work. It was really a great example of "it just works" software. Seeking was quick, plugins were plentiful, they didn't bundle lots of bloatware, it was just a better experience than most of the other options at the time.
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You've answered your own question, the answer is yes.
You look like you've been paying as much attention to history as the curators. MP3 wasn't the start of sharing, Napster was. Music got shared before hand in various formats, and continues to be shared now in various formats. MP3 was a temporary and incremental improvement in compression of previous formats. There were better compression techniques (equally encumbered such as ATRAC) at the time, and the only reason sharing gained popularity is due to the actual sharing methods not the compression.
Put Napster
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One can debate if it's WoW that should depict computer games. Personally I would have chosen Pong oder PacMan, probably Pong.
But computer gaming has redefined the world, for better or worse.
MP3 did change the world cause it was first. Just like the cars 100 years ago changed the world, even when a horse and buggy was waayyy more practical and faster and cheaper then. Mrs. Benz' car was simply shit when she made her historical drive to relatives, but the concept of cars changed the world. Same with MP3s. AAC
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Pong is pure TTL logic - there's no computer programming involved. Pac-Man is as much about the sprite/tilemap hardware used to throw graphics on the screen with a relatively slow CPU as it is about the game programming.
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In some cases it looks like they did not choose the first instance of a certain idea or piece of technology, but the instance that popularized it. Hence MP3 instead of AAC or previous formats, and WoW instead of Nethack or Ultima Online. Photoshop? Not the first either.
Of course there's always going to
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but the instance that popularized it.
So MP3 still doesn't belong on the list because what popularised music sharing was Napster, and MP3 was a consequence of it being the default format Napster looked for.
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Software that changed the world? World of Warcraft is a game, what about pageranking and crawling? Where's the search engines?
Why is a patent encumbered music compression format on the list, did music not get shared before it? I mean the most popular online music shops don't use that format, neither does digital radio. Why MP3 and not AAC, and isn't MP3 just a succession of a previous format and one that is under constant redevelopment?
On that list, Photoshop, MRIs and Wikipedia deserve the place. The rest should get the curators fired.
I like that they are including the historical context. In rush to create programs we forget they are often merely a new way to do something that has been done before. They are innovative and often provide capabilities and ease of use the previous incarnations lacked; but they aren't new ideas. D&D existed before WOW, Darkrooms before Photoshop, telegrams before texting, etc. Like sex, every generation thinks they discovered it while the previous ones just chuckle...
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Technically, stitching patterns were the first thing to make this transition. In the early 19th ce
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You're miscrediting history, and then you came to the correct conclusion by the end of the post. There was nothing special about MP3. ATRAC had almost quality parity 3 years before MP3 was standardised, and had far superseded it shortly after. What made MP3 special was Napster which not only deserves its place on the list for popularising the idea of stored shareable music, but also started the idea of a P2P network which paved the way to decentralised P2P systems we have today, i.e. a true game changer.
Not Sure How I feel about this (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm curious how other software engineers feel about this. I mean, I started on a Commodore 64 as a kid and later went on to architect highly scalable enterprise systems but for some reason I don't feel like we need a museum to honor the people who practice our trade. I feel like we should recognize the amazing feats we accomplished with our passion, ingenuity and persistence and inspire others with them. I'm no hero. I'm just a master of a craft and in performing my craft I try to make the world a better place with it.
Also, I doubt the creators of World of Warcraft would consider themselves heroes. World of Warcraft was just an epic feat in creating a time waster. Don't get me wrong, it was a feat of software engineering but it didn't really add much value to the world. There are far better examples of software systems that did really make a difference in the world. For example, we should be honoring DARPA for creating the very technology that Slashdot broadcasts its information on and we have these discussions on. Disney's Spaceship Earth had a futuristic vision of Earth sponsored by AT&T that we would have a global communication network where we could video conference each other around the world. Guess what? We've arrived at the future vision. That's something to stand in sheer awe of, not World of Warcraft and Photoshop.
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When we celebrate architecture and it's heroes, we celebrate the likes of Sir Christopher Wren, not so much the guy who designed the extension to your house.
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Well said. Btw, you used the word "engineer" when it should have been "programmer". Developing software is not a physics-based discipline like electrical, mechanical or chemical engineering and therefore is nowhere near the rigor required to be "engineering".
Go try to solve Primes in P and let me know how much easier it is than electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering. By the way, you might also get a million dollars [claymath.org] if you can because it might help solve P vs NP. But you know, mathematics is easy right especially for you electrical engineers. Easy peasy. Godspeed my friend! p.s.: I find it funny this debate has been raging for decades. :)
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[Internet technology is] something to stand in sheer awe of, not World of Warcraft and Photoshop.
I agree entirely. NONE of those seven things on the list rise to the level of software heroics. The Internet, on the other hand, changed the world in a way that no other software even remotely approaches.
While this Computer History Museum exhibit's purpose is laudable, its choices for the exhibit are shamefully ridiculous.
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I could easily argue that the Internet was just an epic feat in creating a time waster.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss World of Warcraft when considering software that added value to the world. For players, there are certainly social benefits to playing, as well as improvements in cooperation, fine motor skills, and tactical and strategic thinking. The game also encourages socialization outside your geographical region, and often outside your cultural boundaries.
From a scientific point of view, the Corrup
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How does that compare to how we honor football players?
I think it's insane that we pay some sports players millions of dollars a year but police officers and firefighters that keep you and your family safe in a lot of cases make below median household income. We usually don't recognize the true merits of things.
look at life: has software changed it? (Score:3)
Clearly, the museum wasn't trying to list the top 7 most inventive software creations ever. Instead, they looked at people's lives / endeavors and ask whether software had changed that aspect of life. Roughly:
Entertainment (visual): Photoshop
Entertainment (audio): MP3
Medicine: MRI
Manufacturing: car crash simulation
Scholarship: Wikipedia
Communication: texting
It Makes a Visually Appealing Exhibit: World of Warcraft
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XEROX PARC (Score:1)
Where engineers wrote the first code for graphical interfaces - windows, which was the basis for Apple's Macintosh and later Microsoft Windows and every modern operating system. Without that, we'd all be working on command-lines.
They also created the laser printer there, among other items, but I guess that isn't "software" engineering.
EQ (Score:2)
Wasn't EverQuest effectively the same as World of War craft except 5 years earlier? I've played both, the details are different but the general idea is the same.
Most of these MMOs aren't as good as UO back in it's golden days.
Wow, does that mean I get to wear a cape (Score:2)