Read the Turing Award Lecture (or view the video recording of the talk) given by one of these winners:

  • Frances Elizabeth Allen (video recording)
  • John Backus
  • Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. (read his "No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accident in Software Engineering" instead of his Turing Award Lecture)
  • Edsger W. Dijkstra
  • Robert W. Floyd
  • Richard W. Hamming
  • C.A.R. Hoare
  • Donald E. Knuth
  • Barbara Liskov (video recording)
  • Maurice V. Wilkes
  • Niklaus Wirth

Look for in your chosen article for opinion, history, and concepts related to programming languages. You might also find advice for careers. You may include in your presentation anything from you article that you find interesting.

Read your chosen article as you might read for pleasure in a novel or magazine. Then read the article a second time. Read more slowly and attentively. Sit upright. Take notes as you go. Copy key phrases. Rephrase other phrase. Add your own questions. Add your own understanding of the ideas. Begin by following the order and organization you see in the article. Then reorder the points where that makes sense to you. Build an outline. Prepare an oral presentation that follows the outline. Plan on making a five minute presentation. A two page outline will probably suffice for this exercise.



Last modified: Tuesday, September 28, 2021, 10:10 AM