Target
Bc. thesis or Master thesis
Contact

Understanding the full complexity of programming requires an inter-disciplinary approach that is aware of the history and origins of computing concepts, understands their socio-technical nature and the historical developments of the field. If you are interested in looking at programming from a broader historical and philosophical perspective, there are many potential topics to work on:

  • Recovering ideas from past programming systems - There are many past programming systems that have been forgotten (Commodore 64 BASIC, Hypercard, Boxer, LISP machines), but have interesting ideas in them that could be adapted and used in programming. A project could document such systems using historical sources and reimplement some of the ideas.

  • Document how programming concepts evolve - Concepts like types, processes, objects or events have existed in many different programming environments over time (but also in logic or linguistics). The idea is to document the meanings of such concepts in the past, see how the meaning changes and how new technologies, formalisms or languages shape the meaning of our concepts (see also Lakatos (1976)).

The above are just two example ideas - if you find them interesting, please get in touch! A project like this would put more emphasis on rigorous working with historical sources and quality of writing and may be more suitable for students with some relevant background or existing interest in the topic. In other words, it is less technical but equally challenging as more technical work.

References