The History of the History of Algorithms: Practitioner Histories and Teleology
fkasummer · x · 2026-11-10
A JHI Blog essay by Felicia Jing examines a peculiarity of computing history: its earliest and most influential histories of algorithms were written not by trained historians but by programmers and engineers like Donald Knuth and Herman Goldstine. Their "deep histories" traced algorithms back to 17th-century mechanical calculation and ancient Greek mathematics, committing what academics consider a cardinal sin—teleological periodization that frames modern computer science as the natural endpoint of progress. The essay defends this "improper periodization" and explores what it reveals about how the field narrates itself.
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