I think programming is a mental discipline - like teaching numeracy and simple mathematics, teaching simple programming seems to me to have merit.
BigDumbDinosaur wrote:
I liken computer programming to creating or composing music.
Yes! Software, and in my opinion hardware design too, is about creativity.
In days of old when knights were bold etc. such designs were in the intersection of science and art. Sadly many companies in a misguided attempt of saving money have decided to load up with cheap labour and using quality systems turn the jobs into a fully taylorized craft where thinking is optional. That should then lend itself to massive outsourcing and offshoring. Thankfully the pendulum is now returning and in-sourcing is now a word. Hopefully creativity will be more appreciated next.
I think BDD was referring to a certain cellist, your truly; but Dr. Jefyll is also a bassist (on bass viol, not bass guitar). There's a picture of him playing on his website.
Yeah, I forgot about Jeff, which was incredibly bad form on my part.
Many people don't know the history of the Kenbak-1 Digital Computer, but it's considered to be the world's first commercially available personal computer -- and one is going up for sale in just a few minutes. John Blankenbaker introduced the $750 machine in 1971 -- years ahead of the more well known Altair 8800 and Apple I, but after the Datapoint 2200 -- hoping to sell it to schools as a way to introduce people to computer programming. It didn't have a microprocessor at all, and contained only 256 bytes (you read that correctly) of RAM.
OK, I am joining this thread late, but that doesn't stop me from having an opinion; and a unique one, at that.
The crux of the problem/question is twofold; (1) terminology and and/or taxonomy and (2) theory and/or process. We might first ask ourselves a few preliminary questions about our own epistemology and the existence and nature of the evidence that we marshal in support of our answer(s).
First, philosophy and epistemology. In a simplistic way, we might split the sciences into the "hard sciences" and, if we are oppositionally inclined, the "soft sciences". Being a member of the latter group, I would prefer the term "historical sciences". So, chemistry and physics, being "hard" are best presented by a series of theoretical statements and mental models which give a framework to those repeatable experiments whose reality and factual nature cannot be denied by sane and rational persons, in full possession of their perceptual and cognitive faculties. For my part, such a science seems "hard" and very much impervious to outside attack. The facts organized in this fashion are very objective.
The historical sciences, on the other hand, are very much subject to the inclinations of the initial observer. As a consequence of the unrepeatable nature of historical events, biology, sociology, anthropology, geology, paleontology, history, and political science are at the mercy of a more "ad hoc" form of reasoning and theorizing. This is not to say that their sciences are "less true" or "less factual" but, merely, less certain, and (fortunately!) less subject to technological adaptation.
So, with that primer on philosophy, we might ask ourselves about the nature of the evidence. Are there extant specimens of this thing you call a "personal computer"? Extinct specimens? Fossil DNA (i.e. extinct software)? Fossil Hardware (i.e. extinct PCs)? Intermediate forms?
What is an intermediate form? What is a precursor/ancestral form? How does the physical entity evolve over time? Are there any natural groupings? Cohesive entities we might refer to as "types' or "kinds" or "species"? Where would Plato draw the line between the separate eidos? Aristotle? What is a PC species and what is merely a race or variety or population?
Perhaps you object to the biological metaphor? A fair objection, as it is a "loose fit". But, I would argue that, despite the well-known difficulties of the early evolutionists of the 20th century, this model, as revised by the Neo-Darwinists, can be very well adapted to the question in this thread, as originally proposed, above (i.e., first page, first post, and title). let us follow the metaphor a bit further.
The "Taxonomy of Things" is a philosophical puzzle that is well known; at least since the Ancient Greeks. As tough a puzzle as this is, no adequate solution has been found, or, perhaps, ever will be. The trouble is too suvbject to the whims and fashions of various philosophies, in vogue, and various linguistic assumptions and habits which conspire to muddy the thinking of even the most logical of human beings. Furthermore, the complexities of existence are such as to preclude any constant set of rules, valid for all occasions, utilizable for the production of natural groupings. In short, all systems of taxonomy, biological or otherwise, are subject to revision. (Even chemistry and physics are not, in an ultimate sense, immune to this consideration, but they are practically so!).
Secondly, we make reference to the history of the extant items, for which we wish to derive a grouping. If one is seeking the "first" of an item, the first in history, this seems to presuppose (1) a definable item (or rather, one type specimen, of which many other specimens are presumed to bear some natural relation) (2) a period lacking said definable item and (3) a period after which the existence of the definable item cannot be reasonably denied. In the case of biological species, a type specimen is collected, defined, photographed, drawn, stuffed/preserved, and meticulously described in the literature. Notes on variation within a biological population and/or species can be made. So it is with examples of computers and associated technology. However, since technology does not reproduce itself, as biological entities can,we are encountering our first REAL difficulty with this metaphor. But it is not an insurmountable one.
Biological reproduction, with minimal alteration from generation to generation, follows some few "hard science" physical rules. These rules, over time, produce a predictably unpredictable change, over time, and thus, evolution. So it is with the mental products of the human mind. And so, the physical instantiations of the mental products of the human mind, follow this predictably unpredictable, change over time.
While the argument, immediately above, is a somewhat weak "patch", I am sure it will hold while I "float the rest of this theoretical boat". Now, I reach the purpose of this extensive discourse. Perhaps an "evolutionary tree" of the personal computer is in order? Does such a thing already exist? Cladistics should be a "watchword" for anybody attempting such a phylogenetic study. Apomorphy, synapomorphy, analogy, homology, monophyletic, paraphyletic, and parsimony are, at minimum, the vocabulary for such an endeavor.
What is especially needed is a list of traits, common to most of the major competitors for the title of the appellation "the first personal computer", and then, given the most parsimonious tree for this evolution, there should be a monophyletic clade that exhibits the relationship of the "first PC" --or, more likely, as I read all of your responses and you folks seem more familiar with the actual historical data of your subject, "the first family of PCs"--to the rest of the "tree of automata".
Now, one last word of warning. It has been my experience that "socio-cultural evolution" and its associated manifestations, functions on a different time-scale than regular biological evolution, and, furthermore, is more apt to "cross-fertilization" than is the genetic agglomerations that we call "biological species". Despite this difficulty, the methodology is a good one, and takes into account all available evidence and methodological considerations. Unless, of course, it doesn't? You be the judge.
Hmm, I don't think so - methods in biology work well because of how descent works. Ideas in culture don't descend in such a simple way - an idea can have many influences and they can be strong or weak, obvious or obscure. I'm sure the cultural historians of the world have their methods.
I'd agree that anyone offering an opinion should ideally say what they mean by their terms, and for a good discussion should offer some reasons for their opinion.
But I don't actually see anything about the history of personal computing in what you wrote!
I hate chiming in on such an ancient thread, but I noted one glaring omission from the candidates: Gary Kildall.
He may not have been the absolute first to have what could be called a "personal computer", he did create CP/M which has a legacy which stretches to modern computers. Additionally, there are plenty of anecdotes of him carrying a computer in a briefcase in the early 1970s. He also innovated many of the storage techniques we took for granted by the 1980s such as *gasp* file directory caches. Additionally, he created (by almost anyone's standards) the first compiler designed to be used on a personal computer.
He easily could be considered the inventor of what we consider a personal computer these days. He helped bring computing to the masses, making it actually personal, and he created the first truly interoperable operating system in an era when everything was machine-specific (if not model-specific!) from operating system to storage.
This is leaving out his later projects including GEM and multimedia, of course. But perhaps those could be considered "personal computing" by today's standards, as well… Also, he became possibly the most accessible computing pioneer for a while, as a co-host of Computer Chronicles (which aired on many PBS stations in the USA) and he didn't even pimp his own products too often on the show, though he did have an obvious fondness for Atari computers. Perhaps that's too personal for the subject of computing, though?
But this is all just my two cents, taking the view of a "personal computer" being a full system which is accessible to the average person (which automatically excludes blinkenlights, and the KENBAK-1 and Micral-N, sadly) which would include at least a screen of a couple lines (preferably addressable) or maybe a dedicated small and quiet teletype (my personal definition doesn't like it, but I'm trying to be fair) designed for the system and for use in a home or quiet office environment, an easy-to-use input device (which could include aforementioned teletype), and software at a reasonable price.
Further, it could be argued that if it wasn't for Gary Kildall, much of your productivity software wouldn't exist in a form you recognize. A very notable example: Microsoft Word? Thank WordStar which started on CP/M, followed by years of competition and idea percolation. Even much of the software that came out for the early MS-DOS systems (and sometimes even 6502-based systems) resembled the interfaces of CP/M software, even if there was no CP/M release. It could be argued that this is because it was the most logical use of character-cell displays and the keyboard layouts, but that again leads to the argument that CP/M was potentially the first time many people of the era had seen the technologies and they were just replicating what they could identify with.
*shrug* In the end, this is an unanswerable question. How personal are we talking? What defines "computer"? What do the words really mean in conjunction with each other? What is our baseline set of requirements? Is there any specific feature required to be present? We're unlikely to reach consensus on all of these questions, and others, but it is a useful exercise to help remember those who blazed the trails we still walk upon.
Last edited by lewellyn on Sun Feb 21, 2016 8:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
You're right, consensus is unlikely and the definitions are slippery. This is an interesting read: http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/ ... _perso.php
(The first decade of personal computing. David H. Ahl. Creative Computing, 1984)
Welcome, lewellyn. I had a great uncle by that name.
lewellyn wrote:
I hate chiming in on such an ancient thread,
It's not even a slight negative, so do not apologize. We keep the archives for a reason. Most members here, even if professional in a closely related field, work on their 6502 projects and documentation when they don't have to mow the lawn or something like that, and projects may span years, and so can conversations. Picking it up again is quite appropriate. If one were to start another topic just because the old one had been dormant for so long, now we would have to go back and find the first one to see where we left off, or we'd be repeating a lot of material needlessly and cluttering the forum. Go ahead and look through the archives, and jump in and contribute on anything, no matter how old (except that the Delphi portion is locked). Take it from the moderator (yours truly).
Quote:
but I noted one glaring omission from the candidates: Gary Kildall. [...] Also, he became possibly the most accessible computing pioneer for a while, as a co-host of Computer Chronicles [...]
I enjoy watching videos of computer history, and have watched many episodes of The Computer Chronicles. They had one as a tribute to him after his death, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVqBokd3l2E .
Well put, lewellyn. It's hard to argue against that. Back then I mostly worked on minicomputers, except for some projects where I used the Apple II (occasionally combined with a mini). The Apple projects would be something very specific developed in UCSD Pascal and 6502 assembly language. But soon I had Apple II clones with built-in Z80 support (e.g. the Basis 108, or Taiwan Apple clones), and switching to CP/M mode made me feel at home - I had an operating system, like on a mini, not just a BASIC or monitor prompt.
On the subject of Kildall and CP/M, it's interesting that CP/M allowed for application portability and a thriving software sector - the 6502 never had such a universal technical underpinning which allowed for portable application. One might say that layers of abstraction are costly, too costly for an 8-bit platform. One might say that it's difficult to abstract the hardware beyond filesystems and textual I/O, so once we have bit mapped graphics, sprites, sound chips, a universal BIOS or OS is even further away. One might also observe that MSX was a standard invented to allow portability, and didn't do especially well in the market.
What did the 6502 have? Two or three overwhelmingly dominant platforms. Not too bad for porting software from one to another.
