This work is a historical and philosophical study of the programming
work carried out by John von Neumann in the period 1945-8. At the
heart of the book is an examination of a manuscript featuring the
earliest known surviving example of von Neumann’s coding, a routine
written in 1945 to ‘mesh’ two sequences of data and intended to be
part of a larger program implementing the algorithm now known as
mergesort. The text of the manuscript itself, along with a preliminary
document describing the code he used to write this program, are
reproduced as appendices. The program is approached in three chapters
describing the historical background to von Neumann’s work, the
significance of the sorting application itself, and the development of
the EDVAC, the machine for which the program was written. The
subsequent chapters widen the focus again, discussing the subsequent
evolution of the program and the crucial topic of subroutines, before
concluding by situating von Neumann’s work in a number of wider
contexts. The book also offers a unifying philosophical interpretation
of von Neumann’s approach to coding.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9783319916712
Publisert
2018
Utgiver
Vendor
Springer
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter