Table of Contents

From the contents. Early Civilisations.- The Babylonians.- The Egyptians.- The Greeks.- The Romans.- Foundations.- Boole.- Babbage.- Formalism.- Turing.- Shannon.- Von Neumann.- Hermann Zuse.- Computer Programming Languages.- Object-oriented Languages.- Functional Programming Languages.- Logic Programming Languages.- Syntax and Semantics.- Software Engineering.- What is Software Engineering?- Early Software Engineering.- Software Engineering Mathematics.- Formal Methods.- Software Inspections and Testing.- Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems.- Descartes.- Philosophy and AI.- Cognitive Psychology.- Linguistics.- Cybernetics.- Logic and AI.- Computability, Incompleteness and Decidability.- Robots.- Neural Networks.- Expert Systems.- The Internet Revolution.- The ARPANET.- TCP/IP.- Birth of the Internet.- Birth of the World-Wide-Web.- Dot Com Companies.- E-Software Development.- E-Commerce Security.- Famous Technology Companies.- Microsoft.- Motorola.- Apple Computers.- Oracle.- Siemens.- HP.

Reviews

From the reviews: "The history of computing is finding its way into the college curricula more often, and therefore the need for an accessible text on the subject is becoming greater. O'Regan's book certainly merits careful consideration as an undergraduate text, as it has much to offer! Many books on computer science history emphasize only one or two areas -- usually hardware development and the commercial history. This book is much broader in scope! it is more suitable for an undergraduate course than most other books! The book is a good size; it is not too big physically, and not too detailed for an undergraduate treatment or for a general reader who wants an overview that can be easily digested over a rainy weekend! O'Regan's work manages to be both brief and broad in scope -- a difficult task. This makes the book a valuable read and a good textbook." (M.D. Derk, ACM Computing Reviews) "In summary, I believe this text delivers on its aim of being an introduction to the topic for a technical audience. The book's main strength is the inclusion of software engineering approaches such as CMMI. This helps communicate a message that 'computing' is not just about calculation or data processing, but a complex topic that intersects with the history of business delivery, quality standards, and process governance." (Charles Care, BSHM Bulletin, Vol. 24, 2009)