A Computer Science Reader, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1988 Selections from ABACUS

A Computer Science Reader covers the entire field of computing, from its technological status through its social, economic and political significance. The book's clearly written selections represent the best of what has been published in the first three-and-a-half years of ABACUS, Springer-Verlag's internatioanl quarterly journal for computing professionals. Among the articles included are: - U.S. versus IBM: An Exercise in Futility? by Robert P. Bigelow - Programmers: The Amateur vs. the Professional by Henry Ledgard - The Composer and the Computer by Lejaren Hiller - SDI: A Violation of Professional Responsibility by David L. Parnas - Who Invented the First Electronic Digital Computer? by Nancy Stern - Foretelling the Future by Adaptive Modeling by Ian H. Witten and John G. Cleary - The Fifth Generation: Banzai or Pie-in-the-Sky? by Eric A. Weiss This volume contains more than 30 contributions by outstanding and authoritative authors grouped into the magazine's regular categories: Editorials, Articles, Departments, Reports from Correspondents, and Features. A Computer Science Reader will be interesting and important to any computing professional or student who wants to know about the status, trends, and controversies in computer science today.

Editorials.- Who Reads abacus?.- Star Wars: What Is the Professional Responsibility of Computer Scientists?.- Less than Meets the Eye.- Babel and Newspeak in 1984.- Don’t Shoot, They Are Your Children!.- Articles.- Who Invented the First Electronic Digital Computer?.- Programmers: The Amateur vs. the Professional.- Japanese Word Processing: Interfacing with the Inscrutable.- Living with a New Mathematical Species, The impact of computing on mathematics.- Foretelling the Future by Adaptive Modeling, Compressing data to an average of 2.2 bits per character.- Automating Reasoning, AR programs can help solve problems logically.- The Composer and the Computer, Composing serious music with algorithm.- Mathematical Modeling with Spreadsheets, Examples and problems in spreadsheet modeling.- U.S. versus IBM: An Exercise in Futility? Lessons of the longest antitrust suit in U.S. history.- In Quest of a Pangram, Having serious fun with a word puzzle.- Microcomputing in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, It lags the West in every way.- Chess Computers, A critical survey of commercial products.- Departments.- Book Reviews.- Books for Every Professional.- The Fifth Generation: Banzai or Pie-in-the-Sky?.- In the Art of Programming, Knuth Is First; There Is No Second.- The Permanent Software Crisis.- IBM and Its Way.- Problems and Puzzles.- Computer-Assisted Problem Solving.- Computers and the Law.- Who’s Liable When the Computer’s Wrong?.- Personal Computing.- Is There Such a Thing as a Personal Computer?.- The Computer Press.- Specialization in the Computer Press.- Computing and the Citizen.- SDI: A Violation of Professional Responsibility.- Reports from Correspondents.- Report from Europe: France’s Information Needs: Reality or Alibi?.- Report from the Pacific: Tokyo:Fifth-Generation Reasoning.- Report from Europe: Data Protection: Has the Tide Turned?.- Report from Anaheim: Abacus Goes to the 1983 National Computer Conference.- Report from Washington: MCC: One U.S. Answer to the Japanese.- Features.- Abacus Competition #1: Old and New Computing Aphorisms.- The Editors of abacus Present Their Forecast for the Coming Decade in Computing.- Results of abacus Competition #1: Old and New Computing Aphorisms.- The First Fourteen Issues of Abacus.- Volume Index.