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John Clements edited this page Sep 8, 2023 · 28 revisions

HELLO!

This wiki is now archived. You should instead take a look at

https://calpoly-csse.github.io/CSC-department-history/

... which is backed by

https://github.com/CalPoly-CSSE/CSC-department-history/

I'm archiving this repository now.

Cheers,

John Clements

Welcome to the CSC-department-history wiki!

This content comes from a lengthy text written by Dr. Elmo Keller. The hope is that we'll continue to edit and extend it. For now, please regard all of this as temporary and wrong :).

Mission Statement

The Computer Science Department educates students in the discipline of computer science and teaches them to apply their education to solve practical problems in a socially responsible way. Pursuant to the department's educational mission, faculty engage in research and professional development that allows them to remain current in their fields and to provide technological leadership to the university community.

Table of Contents

[Note: not everything is linked here, e.g. the chapter Hannula & the faculty & staff lists ]

Foreword

The history of the Cal Poly Computer Science Department starts with large mainframes and card input, goes to timesharing and Unix, to small personal computers, and thence to mobile devices more powerful than the original mainframes. It moves from isolated machines, to 300 baud modem connection, to 56K telephone communication, to megabit networks, and on toward gigabit wireless communication networks; from telnet and anonymous ftp, to Archie, to point and click browsers, to hypertext languages and the World Wide Web.

Programming starts out with a small "formula-like language," called Fortran, moves to PL/I, to Pascal, to Modula-2, to Ada, to C/C , to Java, and Racket; from no "goto"s, to modular programming, to object oriented programming, to distributed programming. Yeah, okay, I edited that paragraph.

What an exciting time period to be in this field. Rarely has any discipline had such dramatic changes. What a challenge for a faculty to "teach students in the discipline of computer science."

Like mathematicians, we use formal languages to denote ideas. Like engineers, we design and create programs, assembling components into systems and evaluating trade-offs among alternatives. Like scientists, we analyze and study the behavior of complex systems. The technology development underlying our profession has only one direction - forward, and only one speed -- wide open.

What will computer science be in the future? How do we visualize it? Based on the last 30 years, it will be impossible to predict -- enjoy the journey!

This volume relates the story of the evolution of the Cal Poly Computer Science Department over the past quarter century.

As you read, identify the people in the pictures and in your mind's eye go back in time with them and put yourself in their places. Try to understand their opportunities, their challenges. We hope you enjoy reading this small history and gain an even greater appreciation of your students, the faculty who preceded you, and our profession.

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