Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!madd From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: UNIX history made easy Message-ID: <40101@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: 11 Oct 89 20:26:19 GMT References: <20226@usc.edu> <17085@rpp386.cactus.org> <1858@texsun.Central.Sun.COM> <14920@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1694@muffin.cme.nbs.gov> <17108@rpp386.cactus.org> <11239@smoke.BRL. Reply-To: madd@cs.bu.edu (Jim Frost) Followup-To: comp.unix.wizards Organization: Software Tool & Die Lines: 19 In article <11239@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes: |The point is, if you don't know who Backus, Dijkstra, Hoare, Knuth, |Thompson, Wirth, etc. are and what their major accomplishments were, |you shouldn't advertise yourself as a professional computer scientist. You are mistaken. While I admit that knowledge of what they have done will aid you in being a computer scientist, that knowledge will not make you one and lack of it does not necessarily degrade your ability (although it probably will, especially for certain applications). This is just another lesson in history: you can be more effective if you know of the successes and failures of your predecessors, but you can get the same job done that they did without knowledge of them -- it may just take a lot longer. I only wish that politicians would learn this lesson. jim frost software tool & die madd@std.com