Subject: Article: "The Most Important Software Innovations" by David A. Wheeler

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 16:53:18 +0300 (IDT)

David Wheeler is the author of SLOCCount and an open-source analyst. He
wrote the article "The Most Important Software Innovations":

http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html

I read this article or at least scanned through it, and I can tell that I
was quite disappointed. Wheeler eliminated many important innovations that
seemed very critical to me, and a lot of minor, but important innovations
are missing.

Another factor that is not taken into effect, is integrating innovations
into larger innovations, or simply borrowing them and encapsulating them
while making them more usable. [1] Sure, Microsoft did invent too many
things, and KDE and GNOME borrowed many concepts from Windows or
Macintosh. (KDE can even emulate the three other systems) Does it make
them bad?

It is possible that this article was written as an anti-thesis to
Microsoft's theme of "The Freedom to Innovate". But I don't think it's a
very good anti-thesis.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

[1] - Joel Spolsky has an article, "In Defense of the not-Invented Here
Syndrome"

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        [email-masked]
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       [email-masked]

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

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From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 17:18:12 +0300

> http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html

Does anyone know if this is the same Prof. David Wheeler who invented
Block Sorting (the algorithm behind bzip2) when working in Digital's
SRC (Systems Research Center, in Palo Alto)? [1]

Answering myself (!), I am guessing probably not, because it isn't mentioned
on his homepage, and because the guy who invented Block Sorting is supposed
to be a D. J. Wheeler, not a D. A. Wheeler... Oh, well, I guess it is a
different guy after all.

Block-Sorting David Wheeler's coauthor, Mike Burrows, is another interesting
guy. Besides coinventing that algorithm, he also was one of the two guys
who started the Altavista project in Digital, and the guy who wrote Digital's
"third degree" tools (similar to purify, valgrind, etc.).

[1] search for SRC's Research Report #124, from May 10th, 1994, or I can
send it to anyone who wants it.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |          Tuesday, Aug 6 2002, 28 Av 5762
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Corduroy pillows - they're making
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |headlines!

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From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 17:38:45 +0300

> seemed very critical to me, and a lot of minor, but important innovations

Another strange thing is that on some issues he writes several "innovations"
but in other issues he writes none.

For example, in 1965 supposedly semphores were invented, and in 1974
monitors. People who learned distributed programming on various machines
and languages know that these are just two examples of synchronization
in distributed programming. Is it really so important to list them both?

He then goes on to list two encryption algorithms, RSA and D-H. What about
DES, by the way? Until a few years ago, DES was probably the most widely
used symmetric encryption algorithm...

What about compression algorithms? Huffman trees? Lempel-Ziv?

In adition to "word processor", what about typesetting? Such as troff, TeX,
or things that came before them?

And what about other hardware besides the mouse? The CRT monitors replacing
the teletypes (printers), the Tektronix 4014, the first dot-mapped displays?
Laser printers? Local-area-network solutions like Ethernet and AT&T's
Datakit? Magnetic tape and Hard disks replacing paper-tape-punch and Holerith
cards?

What about the invention of "file systems" and directory heirarchies?

I guess that there are lot more that can be written there... From reading
that list, you'd think that nobody did anything in the 90's besides making
up pompous C++ programming techniques. And what resulted from these techniques?
Yes, that's right: Microsoft's software. Halleluja :)

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |          Tuesday, Aug 6 2002, 28 Av 5762
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Unix is simple, but it takes a genius to
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |understand its simplicity.

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From: Adi Stav <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 1970 12:33:43 +0300

> used symmetric encryption algorithm...

Is DES really an innovation, or is it just a more refined implementation
of millenia-old ideas? Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but it was 
common at first because it was the standard, not because it was the best, 
and is considered secure today mostly because it's been around for so 
long and not because of it being particularly innovative.

Assymmetrical encryption, on the other hand, really IS an innovation, 
probably the most important innovation in cryprography since the invention 
of the field and arguably the mathematical advancement that had the largest 
economical/social impact in the 20th century. And while are probably dozens 
of viable symmetrical encryption algorithms with countless variations on the 
theme, the few and unvarying asymmetrical althorithms that we have are much 
more important individually.

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From: Tzafrir Cohen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 13:05:37 +0300 (IDT)

On Fri, 7 Aug 1970, Adi Stav wrote:

> theme, the few indunvarying asymmetrical althorithms that we have are much

The novel idea (dated from the 1970-s) is that your symmetric cipher does
not have to be good enough to resist an attacker with infinite computing
resources. Rather, that the attacker is limited to "resonable"
(polynomial) time. DES is not worth much in the information-theoretic
model.

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[email-masked]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir