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I sometimes wonder if addition to a Ethics class, Computer Science students need to take a Computer Archaeology class. It might not be a bad thing to bring up a lot of the concepts that aren't in the main stream anymore that have been tried.


Surely, then younger generations would learn how Algol and PL/I were used to write OSes, how Xerox PARC and EHTZ managed to write OSes without a single line of C code and that UNIX wasn't the genesis of operating systems.


I definitely support that. Many tips I give to people for their projects came straight out of 1960's-1980's CompSci or industrial work. It has been a ridiculous amount of effort finding all of it, though. So many silos. It needs integrated on a per topic basis, cleaned up, an executive summary, and references available for follow-up. Preferably with FOSS tools if it's an analytical method, language, etc.

Then, people might quite reinventing the wheel or missing obvious things as much as they do now.


We certainly should. We've been through a lot of ideas that were not practical at the time that could be practical again in the future.


The Future of Programming would be a good introduction: https://vimeo.com/71278954

It's both inspiring and depressing.




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