Abstract
The history of software development is short. It has been less than one hundred years since people wrote and managed to execute the first computer program. Although brief, this history is reminiscent of the history of any other intellectual invention. The most interesting parallel I’ve heard so far is the comparison of the history of computer science with the way people tried to understand the real world. One result of this comparison also yields an explanation of why a good application programming interface (API) is needed. Let’s walk down that road now.
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Bibliography
Edsger Dijkstra, “On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two sides” (1976), http: //www. cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD611.html.
Petr Vopěnka, Úhelný kámen evropské vzdelanosti a moci (Prague: Práh, 1999).
Edsger Dijkstra, Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1982).
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© 2008 Jaroslav Tulach
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(2008). The Art of Building Modern Software. In: Practical API Design. Apress. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-0974-4_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-0974-4_1
Publisher Name: Apress
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