A Brief History of Computing

by Gerard O'Regan

This lively and fascinating text traces the key developments in computation – from 3000 B.C. to the present day – in an easy-to-follow and concise manner. Topics and features: ideal for self-study, offering many pedagogical features such as chapter-opening key topics, chapter introductions and summaries, exercises, and a glossary; presents detailed information on major figures in computing, such as Boole, Babbage, Shannon, Turing, Zuse and Von Neumann; reviews the history of software engineering and of programming languages, including syntax and semantics; discusses the progress of artificial intelligence, with extension to such key disciplines as philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neural networks and cybernetics; examines the impact on society of the introduction of the personal computer, the World Wide Web, and the development of mobile phone technology; follows the evolution of a number of major technology companies, including IBM, Microsoft and Apple.

Genres: History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 2007

Reviews

[Rodrigo · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book gives, as its title mentions, a brief history of computing across the ages, concentrating mostly on the late 19th century onwards, with mentions about important events and persons in older eras.

Even though there is a good amount of content in the book, and one indeed gets a grasp of how nowadays computing came to be, I did not find the reading enjoyable. The writing style feels more like an enumeration of items rather than a cohesive narrative with a central conductive thread. Maybe the intention was never to have that kind of writing, but my impression was that they tried, but failed. For example, at the beginning of each chapter there is an introduction that mentions a summary of what each subsection is about with, in my opinion, little emphasis on how the subsections are connected, giving little value (to the point that I started skipping introductions). Then subsections follow giving more details about the particular subject. Finally there is a closing conclusions section, which basically repeats the same that the introduction said (to the point that I started skipping them too). The subsections themselves also felt disconnected, and it wasn't odd to find typos, duplicated words of phrases, or sentences that abruptly didn't finish at all. References to the figures in the book were consistently slightly out of place too.

[David Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only thing missing from this book is a summary of the important role of pizza and Coca Cola. As in the joke:

Q: What is the definition of a programmer?
A: Someone who takes pizza and Coca Cola and turns it into code.