Cultures of Programming: The Development of Programming Concepts and Methodologies - Hardcover

Petricek, Tomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1009492349 ISBN 13: 9781009492348

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2026

Synopsis

What defines a correct program? What education makes a good programmer? The answers to these questions depend on whether programs are seen as mathematical entities, engineered socio-technical systems or media for assisting human thought. Programmers have developed a wide range of concepts and methodologies to construct programs of increasing complexity. This book shows how those concepts and methodologies emerged and developed from the 1940s to the present. It follows several strands in the history of programming and interprets key historical moments as interactions between five different cultures of programming. Rooted in disciplines such as mathematics, electrical engineering, business management or psychology, the different cultures of programming have exchanged ideas and given rise to novel programming concepts and methodologies. They have also clashed about the nature of programming; those clashes remain at the core of many questions about programming today. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

About this title

About the Author

Tomas Petricek is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University, Prague. He uses interdisciplinary research methods to understand programming and to design simple and expressive programming tools. He developed a theory of context-aware computations at the University of Cambridge, worked on the F# programming language at Microsoft Research and built data exploration tools for non-programmers at The Alan Turing Institute and the University of Kent.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009492349
• ISBN 13: 9781009492348
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368