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  • Book
  • © 2002

Software Pioneers

Contributions to Software Engineering

  • Unique collection of historically significant papers in software engineering

  • Description of the software pioneers and of their work

  • Contributions from a prospective of today

  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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Table of contents (41 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages 1-9
  2. From the Stack Principle to ALGOL

    • Friedrich L. Bauer
    Pages 26-42
  3. Sequentielle Formelübersetzung

    • K. von Samelson, Friedrich L. Bauer
    Pages 43-65
  4. Class and Subclass Declarations

    • Ole-Johan Dahl, Kristen Nygaard
    Pages 91-107
  5. Pascal and Its Successors

    • Niklaus Wirth
    Pages 108-119
  6. The Programming Language Pascal

    • N. Wirth
    Pages 121-148
  7. Program Development by Stepwise Refinement

    • Niklaus Wirth
    Pages 149-169
  8. The IBM Operating System/360

    • Frederick P. Brooks
    Pages 170-178
  9. The Functional Structure of OS/360

    • G. H. Mealy, B. I. Witt, W. A. Clark
    Pages 179-229
  10. Graphical User Interfaces

    • Alan Kay
    Pages 230-231
  11. B-Trees and Databases, Past and Future

    • Rudolf Bayer
    Pages 232-244
  12. Organization and Maintenance of Large Ordered Indexes

    • R. Bayer, E. McCreight
    Pages 245-262

About this book

A lucid statement of the philosophy of modular programming can be found in a 1970 textbook on the design of system programs by Gouthier and Pont [1, l Cfl0. 23], which we quote below: A well-defined segmentation of the project effort ensures system modularity. Each task fonos a separate, distinct program module. At implementation time each module and its inputs and outputs are well-defined, there is no confusion in the intended interface with other system modules. At checkout time the in­ tegrity of the module is tested independently; there are few sche­ duling problems in synchronizing the completion of several tasks before checkout can begin. Finally, the system is maintained in modular fashion; system errors and deficiencies can be traced to specific system modules, thus limiting the scope of detailed error searching. Usually nothing is said about the criteria to be used in dividing the system into modules. This paper will discuss that issue and, by means of examples, suggest some criteria which can be used in decomposing a system into modules. A Brief Status Report The major advancement in the area of modular programming has been the development of coding techniques and assemblers which (1) allow one modu1e to be written with little knowledge of the code in another module, and (2) alJow modules to be reas­ sembled and replaced without reassembly of the whole system.

Reviews

From the reviews:

"Software Pioneers documents the proceedings of a celebration of software engineering held in Bonn, Germany, in June 2001. … As a celebration of software engineering the book works well. It is fairly priced, and the contributions are mostly original, readable and insightful. It is beautifully produced on blued paper, lending a uniformity to the varied typefaces of the facsimile reproductions of historical documents." (Martin Campbell-Kelly, Times Higher Education Supplement, February, 2003)

"This book, coming with four DVDs, presents epochal works of 16 of the most influential software pioneers. … The volume editors coherently integrated the historical contributions with current aspects and future perspectives. … Together, the book and the four DVDs constitute a unique and major contribution to the history of software engineering." (www.amazon.de, December, 2002)

“This book is based on a conference that took place in 2001 … . The speakers at the event … included many of the most legendary names in the history of software development who were asked to reflect on their own pioneering contributions to software engineering in the 20th century. … each of them address the conference with the added benefit of being able to re-read their lectures. This is a ‘must have’ resource for anyone … interested in the history of computing.” (Sue Gee, I Programmer, February, 2009)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Institut für Informatik, Technische Universität München, München, Germany

    Manfred Broy

  • sd&m AG software design & management, München, Germany

    Ernst Denert

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access