A Computer Science Reader

A Computer Science Reader SelectÎons from ABACUS

Edited by

Eric A. Weiss

Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

Eric A. Weiss AssoCÎate Editor, ABACUS

Springer-Verlag New York 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010, USA

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A computer science reader.

lnc1udes index. 1. Electronic data processing. 2. Computers

1. Weiss, Eric A. II. Abacus (New York, N.Y.) QA76.24.C658 1987 004 87-9804

© 1988 by Springer Science+Business Media New York Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988 Originally published by Springer-Verlag New York lnc. in 1988 Ali rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission ofthe publisher (Springer-Verlag, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form ofinformation storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc. in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone.

Typeset by David Seham Associates, Metuchen, New Jersey.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-4612-6458-3 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8726-6

ISBN 978-1-4419-8726-6 (eBook)

Dedication

On 22 December 1986, while this book was being prepared, Walter Kauf­mann-Buhler, Mathematics Editor at Springer-Verlag in New York, died suddenly at the age of 42. The founding and survival of ABACUS are due more to him and his enthusiasm than to any other person," and it was at his suggestion and with his support and encouragement that this collection was put together. His most untimely death was a great loss to everyone associated with ABACUS and especially to the editor of this book, which is here dedicated to Walter's memory.

Preface

These selections from the first 3Y2 years of ABACUS, the computing professional's international quarterly, represent the best of what we have published. They are grouped into the magazine's established categories: Editorials, Articles, Departments, Reports from Correspondents, and Features. Letters to the Editor, ordinarily in a separate section, have been appended to their subjects or objects, as the case may be. The selection of our best has yielded samples from all these categories, including at least one contribution from every regular columnist. In short, what you see here is what an ABACUS subscriber gets.

To make room for the wide variety of material needed to truly represent ABACUS, some ofthe longer articles have been slightly shortened. In each case, the complete original article can be obtained by using the back-issue order information at the end of this book. Readers who want to continue the ABACUS experience may subscribe for future issues with the subscrip­tion information included with this book.

Contents

Dedication ............................................................. v Preface ........................... ,.................................... vii Introduction ........................................................... xiii Credits........................................................ ......... xv

EDITORIALS

Who Reads ABACUS? Eric A. Weiss ................................. 3

Star Wars: What 1& the Professional Responsibility of Computer Sci~ntists? Anthony Ralston ........................ 6

Less than Meets the Eye. Anthony Ralston ........................ 9

Babel and NewspeaJ< in 1984. Anthony Ralston .................... 12

Don't Shoot, They Are Your Children! Eric A. Weiss............. 14

ARTICLES

Who Invented the First Electronic Digital Computer? Nancy Stern ........................................................ 19 Does John Atanasoff deserve as much credit as Eckert and Mauchly for the invention of ENIAC? Letter: Who Owned the ENIACIUNIV AC Interest in the 1950s? Herbert Freeman ........ .................... ....... 34

Programmers: The Amateur vs. the Professional. Henry Ledgard ..................................................... 35 Are many professional programmers really amateurs in disguise? Letter: On Software Development. George Y. Cherlin .......... 46

x Contents

Japanese Word Processing: Interfacing with the Inscrutable. Neil K. Friedman .................................... 48 Coping with the disadvantages of Oriental languages. Letter: Should the Japanese Language Be Reformed? David Isles and Tadatoshi Akiba ................................. 68 Author's Response................................................. 71

Living with a New Mathematical Species. Lynn Arthur Steen ................................................. 73 The impact of computing on mathematics.

Foretelling the Future by Adaptive Modeling. Ian H. Witten and John G. Cleary................................ 86 Compressing data to an average of 2.2 bits per character.

Automating Reasoning. Larry Wos .................................. 110 AR programs can help solve problems logically.

The Composer and the Computer. Lejaren Hiller .................. 138 Composing serious music with algorithms.

Mathematical Modeling with Spreadsheets. Deane E. Arganbright ............................................. 167 Examples and problems in spreadsheet modeling.

U.S. versus IBM: An Exercise in Futility? Robert P. Bigelow.................................................. 180 Lessons of the longest antitrust suit in U.S. history.

In Quest of a Pangram. Lee C.F. Sallows .......................... 200 Having serious fun with a word puzzle.

Microcomputing in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Ross Alan Stapleton and Seymour Goodman.................... 221 It lags the West in every way.

Chess Computers. Danny Kopec.................................... 241 A critical survey of commercial products.

DEPARTMENTS

Book Reviews

Books for Every Professional. Eric A. Weiss....................... 261

The Fifth Generation: Banzai or Pie-in-the-Sky? Eric A. Weiss....................................................... 263 Letter to the Editor: More on the Fifth Generation. John R. Pierce...................................................... 280

Contents xi

In the Art of Programming, Knuth Is First; There Is No Second. Eric A. Weiss......................................... 282

The Permanent Software Crisis. Eric A. Weiss..................... 292

IBM and Its Way. Eric A. Weiss 304

Problems and Puzzles Computer-Assisted Problem Solving. Richard V. Andree 317

Computers and the Law Who's Liable When the Computer's Wrong?

Michael Gemignani ................................................ 338

Personal Computing Is There Such a Thing as a Personal Computer? Larry Press..... 343

The Computer Press Specialization in the Computer Press. Anne A. Armstrong........ 348

Computing and the Citizen SOl: A Violation of Professional Responsibility.

David Lorge Parnas ......................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350

Reports from Correspondents Report from Europe: France's Information Needs: Reality or Alibi? Rex Malik......... 367

Report from the Pacific: Tokyo: Fifth-Generation Reasoning. Rex Malik .................... 375

Report from Europe: Data Protection: Has the Tide Turned? Andrew Lloyd............ 384

Report from Anaheim: ABACUS Goes to the 1983 National Computer Conference.

Eric A. Weiss....................................................... 388

Report from Washington: MCC: One U.S. Answer to the Japanese. Edith Holmes .......... 396

FEATURES

ABACUS Competition #1: Old and New Computing Aphorisms... 401

The Editors of ABACUS Present Their Forecast for the Coming Decade in Computing .............................................. 402

xii Contents

Results of ABACUS Competition #1: Old and New Computing Aphorisms .......................................................... 404

THE FIRST FOURTEEN ISSUES OF ABACUS Contents ............................................................ 405

Index ................................................................ 420

VOLUME INDEX ....................................................... 430

Introduction

It is all Tony Ralston's fault. For years, he dreamt of starting a popular computer magazine com­

parable with Scientific American in editorial quality which, as he said, "would make explicit in clear and objective language the most important technical developments and events in computing." It would be aimed at the informed public, and it was to become a general and technical forum for the computing profession. Computing specialists would read it to keep up with what their peers were up to in other specialties. Computing gen­eralists would read it for its insightful philosophical overviews. Important decision-makers in govenment and industry would be readers and con­tributors.

In 1976, while president of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS), after a lot of high-level wrangling, he per­suaded the leaders of that then financially bloated body to consider spon­soring such a public service magazine, dubbed ABACUS. AFIPS made a full-dress study, issued a prospectus, edited and printed copies of a colorful sample issue, and sought financial backing from the industry.

Then, as far as I, at the time an outside bemused observer, could see, the roof fell in. The AFIPS Board of Directors, stampeded into pusillan­imous action by a notorious few shortsighted, cautious, and anti-everything representatives of the constituent AFIPS societies, ended its lukewarm support of Tony's dream. The excuse for abandonment was that since the myopic captains of our industry would not kick in, the magazine would cost AFIPS money that would reduce the flow of cash from the then golden National Computer Conference to the constituent societies. The AFIPS ABACUS had hit ABORT.

Tony kept the ABACUS vision alive in his mind until, in 1981, he laid the scheme on the late Walter Kaufmann-BOhler, the mathematician-editor of the Mathematical Intelligencer. He and Tony persuaded Walter's em­ployer, Springer-Verlag, a privately owned German publishing house, to

xiv Introduction

publish ABACUS as a quarterly magazine, starting in the fall of 1983. In this, its current manifestation, it is described below in an excerpt from Tony's first editorial and in its Aims and Scope.

Tony assembled some almost-volunteer editors to help him, and called on his vast army of writer-friends to contribute articles. Springer-Verlag handled the production and circulation.

ABACUS has become what its prospectus proposed, an international journal of quality and of generality for computing professionals who want to be informed beyond their specialties. You may judge this for yourself by reading the samples that follow.

Excerpt from Anthony Ralston's editorial in the first issue of ABACUS:

Today, there are no computing generalists. The body of knowledge about com­puting is so large-and growing so fast-that no one can be expert in more than a small part of it, and no one can be even very knowledgeable about much of it. This doesn't set us apart from any other discipline. But the rate of change in computing is probably more rapid than any other discipline has ever witnessed. And, although perhaps it just seems that way, people in computing appear so busy compared to most other professionals that the problem of keeping up with new applications, science, and technology is compounded.

ABACUS will be devoted to making some small dent in this problem. Its articles, its departments, and other features, such as these editorials, will be devoted to presenting a broad variety of subject matter on computer science, computer tech­nology, and computer applications. And lest that sounds a shade too didactic, I hasten to add that we hope to be at least as entertaining as we are informative. Timely, too, and, on occasion, controversial, although not just for the sake of controversy.

Aims and Scope

ABACUS is a journal about computing, computer science, and computer technology, intended not only for professionals in these fields, but also for knowledgeable and interested amateurs. Besides containing articles about computer science and technology themselves and applications of computers, it will also contain articles about the profession and the people in it, and about the social, economic, political, and other impacts of com­puting. The articles and departments will generally have an informal style, and are intended to entertain as well as inform. Opinion and humor will be encouraged, and fiction may occasionally appear. Letters to the editor will also be welcome, and where appropriate, may be controversial (but not outrageous).

Eric A. Weiss October 1987

Credits

Everybody who participated in editing or production and whose name has appeared on the ABACUS masthead is listed below.

Editor and Founder Anthony Ralston SUNY at Buffalo

EDITORIAL COORDINATOR

Caryl Ann Dahlin SUNY at Buffalo

Department Editors BOOK REVIEWS

Eric A. Weiss

COMPUTERS AND THE LAW

Michael Gemignani University of Maine

COMPUTING AND THE CITIZEN

Severo M. Ornstein Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

EUROPE

Associate Editors Edwin D. Reilly, Jr. SUNY at Albany

Eric A. Weiss Consultant

INTERRUPTS Aaron Finerman University of Michigan

PERSONAL COMPUTING

Lawrence I. Press Small Systems Group

PROBLEMS AND PUZZLES

Richard V. Andree University of Oklahoma

THE COMPUTER PRESS

Anne A. Armstrong Langley Publications

Correspondents WASHINGTON

Edith Holmes Rex Malik Andrew Lloyd

JAPAN

Tosiyasu Kunii

xvi Credits

Board of Editors John G. Kemeny Dartmouth Col/ege

Heinz Zemanek Vienna, Austria

Advisory Panel R.W. Berner Consultant

Martin Campbell-Kelly University of Warwick

Ne4 Chapin Consultant

Gordon B. Davis University of Minnesota

Bruce Gilchrist Columbia University

Jacques Hebenstreit Ecole Sliperieure d' Electricite

Peter Kirstein University Col/ege London

Tosiyasu L. Kunii University of Tokyo

Henry Ledgard Human Factors, Ltd.

Harold Lorin IBM Systems Research

Daniel D. McCracken City Col/ege of New York

Harlan D. Mills IBM

Alan J. Perlis Yale University

Lee C.F. Sallows University of Nijmegen

Peter Wegner Brown University

Magazine Designed by: Bob Hollander

Publisher Jolanda von Hagen CO-FOUNDER Walter Kaufmann­Buhler PRODUCTION MANAGER Kristina Joukhadar PRODUCTION EDITOR James Kreydt COpy EDITOR

Glen Becker PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Anthony Strianse

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