Turing's Influence on Programming

11 pages•Published: June 22, 2012

Abstract

Turing's involvement with computer building was popularized in the 1970s and later. Most notable are the books by Brian Randell (1973), Andrew Hodges (1983), and Martin Davis (2000). A central question is whether John von Neumann was influenced by Turing's 1936 paper when he helped build the EDVAC machine, even though he never cited Turing's work. This question remains unsettled up till this day. As remarked by Charles Petzold, one standard history barely mentions Turing, while the other, written by a logician, makes Turing a key player.

Contrast these observations then with the fact that Turing's 1936 paper was cited and heavily discussed in 1959 among computer programmers. In 1966, the first Turing award was given to a programmer, not a computer builder, as were several subsequent Turing awards. An historical investigation of Turing's influence on computing, presented here, shows that Turing's 1936 notion of universality became increasingly relevant among programmers during the 1950s. The central thesis of this paper states that Turing's influence was felt more in programming after his death than in computer building during the 1940s.

Keyphrases: davis, history, logic, programming, turing

In: Andrei Voronkov (editor). Turing-100. The Alan Turing Centenary, vol 10, pages 42-52.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/MFq
	https://doi.org/10.29007/n93n

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{Turing-100:Turings_Influence_Programming,
  author    = {Edgar G. Daylight},
  title     = {Turing's Influence on Programming},
  booktitle = {Turing-100. The Alan Turing Centenary},
  editor    = {Andrei Voronkov},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {10},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/MFq},
  doi       = {10.29007/n93n},
  pages     = {42-52},
  year      = {2012}}

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