The Computer Boys Take over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise (History of Computing)

Best yet from an IT professional who was there through the entire period!! Jon H.

An excellent read for anyone looking to understand why the field of computing used to be feminized and now is male dominated. Ensmenger busts the myth of meritocracy and women's technical incompetence with historical evidence, and the book is full of fascinating ads and images from the period. Oh, and have you ever seen that old 1960s Cosmo article about "computer programming is a great job for girls" floating around the internet? Yeah well Professor Ensmenger found it, tracked down an old copy, scanned it, and then released it into the wild for us all to enjoy--worth thinking about how he's never given credit for that the next time you see it making the rounds. Historians put in the effort to find and publicize these things: if we want to support that we should buy their books.

This was an excellent social history of programmers from about the late 40s to the early 70s. The author does a very good job showing how a lot of contemporary topics in software development have their roots in problems our predecessors identified and grappled with. He also does a very good job examining the impact and underlying dynamics of the professionalization of programming. My biggest gripe with this book is that he stops a decade too early. The 70s saw the emergence of the programmer-turned-CEO, the logical conclusion of the tend toward professionalization he spends so much time on. For a book titled "The Computer Boys Take Over", I was disappointed to see that companies like Microsoft aren't even mentioned. I understand he's interested in a particular moment in history, but I think the narrative would have had much more connection to the present if he had included the 70s.

Review of Ensmenger's "The computer boys take over" by Paul F. Ross Nathan Ensmenger's sociological history of the stored-program digital computer prompts, again, the question "What is history?" I welcomed his book for it promised a look at the interaction between the computer and the scientific, business, government, and opinion-leading communities that have embraced the computer's existence. This history would look for the computer's influence on the course of events, on the way we think about ourselves and guide our affairs. Instead, Ensmenger examines the emerging computer-society interaction from the point of view of the computer careerist, also viewing the challenge to ____________________________________________________________________________________ Ensmenger, Nathan "The computer boys take over: Computers, programmers, and the politics of technical expertise" 2010, The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, x + 320 pages ____________________________________________________________________________________ sponsors and managers of computer-based projects, the search for the proper skills and education needed for preparation as a computer careerist, and the careerists' efforts to forge widely recognized social and professional identity. Ensmenger limits this history to recording events as seen by computing careerists at the time history was being experienced, thus overlooking the historian's and behavioral scientist's opportunity, the outsider's opportunity, to understand events based on retrospective and perspective-enlarged analysis. This review disects Ensmenger's history and seeks to offer a larger framework for further historical analysis. Ensmenger's history, published in 2010, is based on his PhD dissertation completed in 2001 at the University of Pennsylvania where he now teaches. It covers events from about 1945 to 1980. Data from the three most recent decades, 1980 - 2010, almost do not enter Ensmenger's database! This reader understands that a PhD candidate needs to tailor dissertation research to the time and resources available, understands that Ensmenger has added to his dissertation while creating this book, is pleased to have in hand what has been accomplished, but also sees important work yet to be done. Bellevue, Washington 19 November 2010, 23 December 2010 Copyright (c) 2010 by Paul F. Ross All rights reserved.

These readings were few of the many books which kept me intersted from cover to cover. It was a great pick up, even for a novice reader at university.

A fascinating book that covers a critical part of the history of the computing industry, when computing shifted from being a science and engineering marvel, to a business necessity. That transition created an enormous need for computer programmers, and lead to the creation of programming languages (e.g., Fortran, COBOL, ADA) and the development of "software engineering" in response to the "software crisis." The author argues that the responses to that transition leads us to the characteristics of the modern computing industry. For example, he argues that the (failed) attempts to professionalize computer programming is what led to the retreat of women from the field. As a computing educator and education researcher, the book gave me new insights into the role that education plays in software engineering, the "software crisis," and the future of our field. Highly recommended.

First of all, as pointed out in another review, this book is seriously out of date - the basis being things that happened prior to 1980. But what bothers me the most about this book is the total lack of understanding of what a software engineer is. I don't know where Ensmenger got his information, but what he calls software engineering is not what a true software engineer (or any of the professional or technical societies in computing) would call software engineering. Even in the 1970's, when Ensmenger was writing his PhD thesis, the field of software engineering was emerging and those who are competent in that field knew a lot that Ensmenger seems to have missed. True, the term "software engineering" has been bandied about by many who lack a true understanding of what it means to use engineering techniques to build software, but that doesn't excuse such ignorance in a man who purports to be a competent historian. Software factories and the like were once the darlings of managers who wanted to crank out pedestrian software at low cost, but they were not software engineering (and they have largely been supplanted by techniques that require more competence). Ensmerger's view of ADA sounds like he's been talking to a bunch of ADA haters. ADA has its problems, but some of the most competent software ever produced was written in ADA - because it had to be properly engineered for safety reasons. The implication that software engineering was created so we could develop software with marginally competent programmers is insulting to software engineers and highly inaccurate. It's like saying we created electrical engineering so we could do applied physics with marginally competent physicists. Or we created the field of medicine, with all of its licensing and board certifications, so marginally competent physicians could perform. A true expert practitioner in any field realizes the importance of having high quality tools and processes that form a foundation or infrastructure or scaffold, if you will, upon which they can apply their expertise most effectively. This is what software engineering provides to the software developer and the best ones understand its value.

Unique perspective on the history of software ant its role on the computing revolution. Recommended reading for everybody, not only for technology fans.