From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,1042f393323e22da X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,1042f393323e22da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,1042f393323e22da X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: clines@delete_this.airmail.net (Kevin Cline) Subject: Re: Any research putting c above ada? Date: 1997/05/09 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 240383815 References: <5ih6i9$oct$1@waldorf.csc.calpoly.edu> <5k60au$gig@bcrkh13.bnr.ca> <33674E4C.446B@cca.rockwell.com> <5k88b3$340@bcrkh13.bnr.ca> <5k8hui$1k3g@uni.library.ucla.edu> <336A0E5E.446B@magellan.bgm.link.com> <336DF13F.41C6@cca.rockwell.com> <5kpgfu$ju4@uni.library.ucla.edu> X-Orig-Message-ID: <3374ad91.2017834@news.airmail.net> Organization: INTERNET AMERICA NNTP-Proxy-Relay: library.airnews.net Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-05-09T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) wrote: >In article <5kpgfu$ju4@uni.library.ucla.edu> jmartin@cs.ucla.edu (Jay Martin) writes: > > > Interesting, but come to think about it where are the recognized > > "masterworks" of software? > > Would you like me to start a list? Hmmm. (Most names omitted, to >make it sort of a test. Can you put names to these papers, books, or >products? For Early's and Strassen's algorithms, what it does and how >fast gets full credit, I'll give you the authors as a freebie.) > > Quicksort (AFIAK, the first masterwork in software, certainly > recognized as such at the time.) > Heapsort (A few months later, and also recognized as such.) > > The PDP-1 symbolic assembler. (The final version was written as an >self assembling macro, and ran about four columns in the manual, >excluding tables. The PDP-6 and later PDP-10 macro assemblers were >actually bootstrapped using the PDP-1 assembler with different >tables.) > > The paper on THE operating system. (Extra points if you can spell >the name of the school and the authors without looking them up.) > > A Discipline of Programming. > > The Revised report on Algol 60. > > Unix curses. > > Elisa. > > Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (and I don't think the >word software appears anywhere in the book.) > > Early's Algorithm. > > Strassen's Algorithm. > > Emacs (Gosling? Gnu? Multics? All of the above? For that matter:) > > Multics. > > On the decomposition of software into modules. > > TeX (and later LaTeX). > > The Florida algorithm for resolving overloading in Ada. > > The CORDIC algorithm. > > Several factoring algorithms, including P-1, Number Field Sieve, >and all of the Quadratic Sieve variations. > > I considered and eliminated a few others as out of domain: Euclid's >algorithm, the Simplex algorithm for solving linear programming >problems, the fast Fourier transform, the ChirpZ transform, and all >the work on NP completeness. They were all originally considered to >be applied or theoretical mathematics... >-- Most of these are essentially mathematical breakthrough. I think the original poster was looking for masterworks in software engineering -- programs or systems that have enjoyed a long lifetime, been extremely useful and useable, and have also been relatively inexpensive to maintain. I think the UNIX operating system would fall in this category, although not every feature or utility ever written.