Cultures of Programming
Exhibition in the Chodba Gallery, MFF UK
What defines a correct program? What education makes a good programmer? The answers to these questions depend on whether programs are seen as mathematical entities, engineered socio-technical systems or media for assisting human thought.
Cultures of programming
Cultures of Programming shows how programming concepts and methodologies emerged and developed from the 1940s to the present and interprets key historical moments as interactions between five different cultures of programming.
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- Pre-print of the opening dialogue of the first chapter of the book.
Image credits
- Radia Perlman - Cynthia Solomon collection, Source: History of Logo
- Madeleine Carey - MITRE Corporation, Source: Arguments that Count
- John McCarthy - JMC Project, Source: Stanford
- IBM 360 operator - Source: The IBM System/360
- Edwards and Samson - Source: Computer History Museum
History and philosophy of programming and computing
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- Bibliography from the pre-print of the book.
Listed books
- For Fun and Profit , History of Programming Languages, Piracy, Eniac in Action, Mindstorms, The Computer Boys Take Over, Code Nation, Digital Apollo, Tools for Thought, On the Foundations of Computing , Mechanizing Proof, The Dream Machine, Arguments that Count, The Software Arts Structured Programming, Programming Languages, The Art of the Metaobject Protocol, The Art of Computer Programming, Recoding Gender, What the Doormouse Said, Patterns of Software, Weapons of Math Destruction, Computing in the Middle Ages, Architectural Intelligence, The Apple II Age, A People's History of Computing in the United States ./code-poetry A New History of Modern Computing A Science of Operations Programmed Inequality The Hub From Counterculture to Cyberculture Dealers of Lightning Pioneer Programmer Program Verification Histories of Computing The Science of Computing History of Programming Languages (HOPL III) Endless Frontier
The Five Cultures of Programming
The different cultures of programming are rooted in disciplines such as electrical engineering, business management, mathematics or psychology. Those disciplines shaped many of their basic assumptions about programming, what kind of a task it is and how it should be done.
Mathematical culture
The mathematical culture sees programs as mathematical entities. They can be formally analyzed and proven correct with respect to a precise specification from a customer. Proponents of the mathematical culture believe that mathematical methods provide the right mechanism for tackling the increasing complexity of software systems.
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- Selected pages from the following papers
- A Basis for a Mathematical Theory of Computation
- Proof of algorithms by general snapshots
- An axiomatic basis for computer programming
- The next 700 programming languages
- A Formal Description of a Subset of Algol
Image credits
- Burroughs B 5000 - Source: Software Preservation Group
- Tower of Babel - Source: Communications of the ACM
- John McCarthy - Source: Communications of the ACM
- Peter Landin - Passport Picture. Source: QMUL
- Peter Naur - McClure/Randell. Source: NATO 1968
- C.A.R. Hoare - Source: Alchetron
Hacker culture
The hacker culture values direct engagement with the computer and focuses on the nitty-gritty details of program execution. Hackers like to explore the limits of what a machine can do and pride themselves in individual skill, inventing clever tricks to push those limits.
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- Selected pages from the HAKMEM (AIM 239)
Image credits
- HAKMEM - Source: MIT
- Spacewar! - By Joi Ito. Source: Flickr
- MIT TX-0 Computer - Source: Computer History Museum
Engineering culture
Programming is an applied science of engineering. Engineers emphasize well-documented and rigorous methods and practices, develop and adhere to codes of ethics, and invest in tools that support their work.
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- Selected pages from the NATO Software Engineering Conference (1968) proceedings.
Image credits
- The first computer bug - Source: Smithsonian
- NATO 1968 - McClure/Randell. Source: NATO 1968
- Laser Weapon - Concept Art. Source: Wikimedia
- Agile - Screenshot. Source: Agile Manifesto
Humanistic culture
The core concern of the humanistic culture is the relationship of people with computers. Programming is viewed critically with regard to its socio-political implications and impact on education in such areas as literacy, art and creativity.
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- Selected pages from the As We May Think article by Vannevar Bush published by the Life Magazine (1945)
Image credits
- Dynabook - Alan Kay. Source: A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
- HyperCard - Screenshot. Source: Emulator
- Computer Composition with Lines - A Michael Noll. Source: V&A Museum
Managerial culture
The managerial culture views software development as a production-like process and believes that the keys to a successful software project are a suitable development process and a team structure. It favors specification, planning and organization over skills of individual programmers.
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- Copies of the diagrams appearing in the panel
Image credits
- Waterfall - Redrawn. Source: Managing the Development of Large Software Systems (Royce)
- Spiral Model - Modified. Source: Wikimedia (Boehm)
- SAGE - Redrawn. Source: Production of Large Computer Programs (Benington)
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Collaborations and Clashes
The different cultures of programming clash over the nature of programming, but also contribute to shared programming concepts. Their basic assumptions remain at the core of many questions about programming today.
The invention of a programming language
The idea that a programming language is a standalone object independent of a specific computer came about from the meeting of three cultures of programming. The hacker culture provided the necessary implementation tricks, the managerial culture had a practical need for the idea, and the mathematical culture provided the necessary formal language description tools.
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- Appendix from Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals (1969), with a brief overview of langauges referenced in the book.
Image credits
- ENIAC programmers - ARL Technical Library. Source: Mike Muuss
- Robot by Grace Hopper - MIT. Source: When Technology Became Language
- FLOW-MATIC - UNIVAC. Source: Computer History Museum
- Tower of Babel - Book cover. Source: Programming Langugaes (Sammet)
Programming with types
Many programming languages use types to make programs easier and safer, but they differ widely in their understanding of the notion of a type. Are types formal mathematical entities, a clever trick, or a software engineering tool?
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- Opening paragraphs from Bertrand Russell's Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types (5 years after his original Doctrine of Types, but easier to find online)
Image credits
- COMTRAN card - IBM. Source: Bitsavers
- Filing Cabinet - Henry Brown. Source: U.S. Patent 352 036
- Barbara Liskov - Source: Alvaro Videla
- LCF/ML - Milner. Source: Springer
- TypeScript in VS Code - Screenshot by the author
- ALF - Altenkirch et al. Source: A user's guide to ALF
Object-oriented programming
Cultures of programming contribute to shared entities, argue about the nature of programming, but also struggle for control over basic programming methodologies and concepts—like the idea of object-oriented programming.
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- Smalltalk Syntax on a postcard. Source: Ducasse
- C++ snippet. Source: Stroustrup
- UML diagrams. Source: Wikimedia
- Simula. Source: ACM
- BINGO! - Java Sun. Source: Web Archive
Image credits
- Code samples and diagrams as above. Books:
- Simula BEGIN - Birtwistle et al. Source: eBay photo
- Structured Programming - Dahl et al. Source: Archive.org
- Smalltalk-80 - Goldberg et al. Source: ACM
- Byte Magazine - Source: Archive.org
- The C++ Programming Language - Stroustrup. Source: Stroustrup
- Java Chips - BYTE. Source: Archive.org
- Designing Object-Oriented Software - Wirfs-Brock et al. Source: Archive.org
- The Unified Software Development Process - Jacobson et al. Source: Archive.org
What code is beautiful?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The various cultures of programming have different ideas about code and write it for different purposes. Their aesthetic judgment differs too.
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- Dark version of code samples, text and diagram from the panel
Image credits
- Q_sqrt - id Software. Source: GitHub
- Microalgol - McCarthy. Source: A Formal Description of a Subset of Algol
- MVC diagram - Krasner et al. Source: A Description of the Model-View-Controller User Interface Paradigm in the Smalltalk-80 System
- water.c - Holden & Kerr. Source: ./code-poetry
- Anticodes - Havel. Source: Archive.org
What is the problem of programming?
Different cultures of programming have a different basic assumptions about the nature of programming. Is it a mathematical problem, engineering task, problem of management or an artistic endeavor?
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- Diagrams from the Electronic numerical integrator and computer (ENIAC) patent. Source: U.S. Patent 312 0606
Image credits
- UNIVAC I - U.S. Census. Source: Wikimedia
- Dijkstra - ETH Zurich. Source: Wikimedia
- Xerox PARC - Rolling Stone. Source: Archive.org
- NATO 1968 - McClure/Randell. Source: NATO 1968
- SAGE Control Room - IBM. Source: IBM
Programming and computer art
Computers were used in the artistic context since the 1960s. Different ways in which computer programming was used for creating art shows different ways of thinking about programming as a discipline.
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- Graphics used elsewhere in the panel
Image credits
- Lines - Nake. Source: DAM Museum
- ALGORAVE - Maren van der Burght. Source: Flickr
- The Hub - Rich Gold. Source: (personal communication)
- Sonic Pi - Sam Aaron. Source: Sonic-Pi.net