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. Programmers have developed a wide range of concepts and methodologies to construct programs of increasing complexity. This book shows how those concepts and methodologies emerged and developed from the 1940s to the present. It follows several strands in the history of programming and interprets key historical moments as interactions between five different cultures of programming. Rooted in disciplines such as mathematics, electrical engineering, business management or psychology, the different cultures of programming have exchanged ideas and given rise to novel programming concepts and methodologies. They have also clashed about the nature of programming; those clashes remain at the core of many questions about programming today. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

‘The book succeeds not only as a readable story that subject matter enthusiasts can revel in, but it also provides the tools to resolve ingrained disagreements between colleagues. For it is quite possible that your manager is not hopelessly stuck in the past when he characterizes testing as a phase; he may be starting from a different assumption regarding the role of testing in the process. And perhaps your colleague who used to study mathematics is not a hopeless theorist, but his view of what good code looks like is shaped by notions of elegance rather than readability. The fact that we all write Java or C# turns out to be no guarantee that we speak the same language.’

Karl van Heijster Source: Boekenkrant