[转载]《人月神话》结束语：令人向往、激动人心和充满乐趣的五十年

看的很感动 真的 热血沸腾的。到底我要做什么？我想获得FREDERICK P. BROOKS, JR.的激情。

感谢上帝，让我成为了为数不多的那些开开心心做着自己喜欢的工作的人之一。

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结束语：令人向往、激动人心和充满乐趣的五十年（Epilogue Fifty Years of Wonder, Excitement, and Joy）

我依然记得那种向往和开心的感觉－当我在1944年8月7日读到哈佛大学MarkI型计算机研制成功的报道时－那时候我才13岁。MarkI是电子机械学上的奇迹，哈佛大学的Aiken是它的构架设计师，而IBM的工程师Clair Lake，BenjaminDurfee和Francis Hamilton是它的实施设计师。同样令人向往的是读到Vannevar Bush1945年4月发表在亚特兰大月刊上的论文“That We MayThink”（我们的期望？）的时候，在这篇论文中，他建议将大量的知识组织成超文本的网络方式，并为用户提供机器从已有的链接以及指明其他的相关链接。

我对计算机的热情在1952年进一步高涨，因为得到了IBM在纽约恩迪科特的一份暑期工，正是那次，我有了在IBM 604上编程的实际经验，也了解了如何编制IBM701（它的第一个存储程序计算机）程序的正式指令；从哈佛大学Aiken和Iverson名下毕业终于让我的职业梦想变成了现实，并且，就这样沉迷了一辈子。感谢上帝，让我成为了为数不多的那些开开心心做着自己喜欢的工作的人之一。

我实在无法想像还有哪种生活会比热爱计算机更加激动人心，自从从真空管发展到集成电路以来，计算机技术已经飞速发展。我用来工作的第一台计算机，是从哈佛刚刚出炉的IBM7030Stretch超级计算机，Stretch在1961到1964年间都是世界上运算速度最快的计算机，一共卖出了9台。而我现在用的计算机，MacintoshPowerbook，不但快，还有大容量内存和大容量硬盘，而且便宜了1000倍（如果按定值美元来算，便宜了5000倍）。我们依次看到了计算机革命，电子计算机革命，小型计算机革命，微型计算机革命，这些技术上的革命每一次都带来了计算机数量上的剧增。

在计算机技术进步的同时，计算机相关学科知识也在飞速发展。当我在五十年代刚从学校毕业的时候，我能看完当时所有的期刊和会议报告，掌握所有的潮流动向。而我现在只能对层出不穷的学科分支遗憾地说“再见”，对我所关注的东西也越来越难以全部掌握。兴趣太多，令人兴奋的学习、研究和思考的机会也太多——多么不可思议的矛盾啊！这个神奇的时代远远没有结束，它依然在飞速发展。更多的乐趣，尽在将来。

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Still vivid in my mind is the wonder and delight with which I—then 13years old—read the account of the August 7, 1944, dedication of theHarvard Mark I computer, an electromechanical marvel for which HowardAiken was the architect and IBM engineers Clair Lake, Benjamin Durfee,and Francis Hamilton were the implementation designers. Equallywonder-provoking was the reading of Vannevar Bush's "That We May Think"paper in the April 1945 Atlantic Monthly, in which he proposedorganizing knowledge as a big hypertext web and giving users machinesfor both following existing trails and blazing new trails ofassociations.

My passion for computers got another strong boost in 1952, when asummer job at IBM in Endicott, New York, gave me hands-on experience inprogramming the IBM 604 and formal instruction in programming IBM's701, its first stored-program machine. Graduate school under Aiken andIverson at Harvard made my career dream a reality, and I was hooked forlife. To only a fraction of the human race does God give the privilegeof earning one's bread doing what one would have gladly pursued free,for passion. I am very thankful.

It is hard to imagine a more exciting time to have lived as acomputer devotee. From mechanisms to vacuum tubes to transistors tointegrated circuits, the technology has exploded. The first computer onwhich I worked, fresh out of Harvard, was the IBM 7030 Stretchsupercomputer. Stretch reigned as the world's fastest computer from1961 to 1964; nine copies were delivered. My Macintosh Powerbook istoday not only faster, with a larger memory and bigger disk, it is athousand times cheaper. (Five thousand times cheaper in constantdollars.) We have seen in turn the computer revolution, the electroniccomputer revolution, the minicomputer revolution, and the microcomputerrevolution, each bringing orders-of-magnitude more computers.

The computer-related intellectual discipline has exploded as has thetechnology. When I was a graduate student in the mid-1950s, I couldread all the journals and conference proceedings; I could stay currentin all the discipline. Today my intellectual life has seen meregretfully kissing subdiscipline interests good-bye one by one, as myportfolio has continuously overflowed beyond mastery. Too manyinterests, too many exciting opportunities for learning, research, andthought. What a marvelous predicament! Not only is the end not insight, the pace is not slackening. We have many future joys.

转载于:https://www.cnblogs.com/wanana/archive/2010/02/04/1663593.html