Code Nation is a new history of personal computing that emphasizes the technical and business challenges that software developers faced when building applications for CP/M, MS-DOS, UNIX, Microsoft Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and other emerging platforms. It is a popular history of computing that explores the experiences of novice computer users, tinkerers, hackers, and power users, as well as the ideals and aspirations of leading computer scientists, engineers, educators, and entrepreneurs. Computer book and magazine publishers also played important, if overlooked, roles in the diffusion of new technical skills, and this book highlights their creative work and influence.
Code Nation offers a “behind-the-scenes” look at application and operating-system programming practices, the diversity of historic computer languages, the rise of user communities, early attempts to market PC software, and the origins of “enterprise” computing systems. Code samples and over 80 historic photographs support the text. The book concludes with an assessment of contemporary efforts to teach computational thinking to young people.
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|Publisher:||Association for Computing Machinery and Morgan & Claypool Publishers|
|Edition description:||New Edition|
|Product dimensions:||7.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.00(d)|
About the Author
Table of Contents
- How important is programming?
- Four computing mythologies
- FORTRAN, Logo, and the Tower of Babel
- Advocating computer literacy
- Four million BASIC programmers
- Power users, tinkerers, and gurus
- Hackers and cyberpunks
- Computer magazines and historical research
- Developing for MS-DOS: authors and entrepreneurs
- C programming nation: from Tiny C to Microsoft Windows
- “Evangelism is sales done right”: PCs and commercial programming culture
- Afterword: programming in the Internet age