There is a lot to be learned from reading historical CS texts. It helps us see how developers worked under constraint of historical hardware and it also helps us find commonalities to modern problems. There is a lot to be said about software engineering challenges that are a problem today and a problem decades ago. This creates a clearer picture of blind spots in the industry and reading outdated texts can be a fruitful endeavor despite seeming counterintuitive. I have a small collection of CS books that I have purchased from a used bookstore and I always walk away with new insights when I read them even if the information is outdated.
replyThank you for your tone. I agree! Had Starting Forth, Thinking Forth, and Elizabeth D Rather books at one time. Reread TCL the Misunderstood (Antirez), every few years for the memoizing bit. Etc.
replyTo the critics of parent, the reason we add dates and people make such posts is so HN users can know if it is something they read or something new or just something new to them. So when OP forgets the date, we make a post with the date so OP or the mods can edit the title.
replynothing better to add?
replyI will read it, closely, but was all hopped-up expecting some new implementation, as I am down the Smalltalk rabbit hole lately, including watching lots of old videos. And perusing https://selflanguage.org
replyIt's the convention on HN to add the year of an article at the end of a title in parens. Users often cue us to do this by posting the year in the comments. They aren't being dismissive—it's just an obscure little custom!
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