Seven Great Blunders of the Computing World

Holmes, WN

tp2Jl.pdf (151.52 kB)

Seven Great Blunders of the Computing World

journal contribution

posted on 2023-05-25, 22:04 authored by Holmes, WN

This essay suggests that the computing profession should recognise that it has been responsible for quite a few serious blunders so that it can strike an appropriate balance between pride and humility. The essay looks at a blunder in each of seven areas: numeric encoding, text encoding, scientific programming, commercial programming, arithmetic processor design, keyboard design, and computing terminology.

History

Publication title

Computer

Volume

35

Article number

7

Number

7

Pagination

112, 110-111

ISSN

0018-9162

Publication status

Published

Rights statement

This essay has been more formally published as essay 2.3 in the author's book "Computers and People" (Wiley, 2006). This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. Copyright 2002 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.