We are Done with 'Hacking'

In the 1970s, when Microsoft and Apple were founded, programming was an art only a limited group of dedicated enthusiasts actually knew how to perform properly. CPUs were rather slow, personal computers had a very limited amount of memory, and monitors were lo-res. To create something decent, a programmer had to fight against actual hardware limitations. In order to win in this war, programmers had to be both trained and talented in computer science, a science that was at that time mostly about algorithms and data structures. The first three volumes of the famous book The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth, a Stanford University professor and a Turing Award recipient, were published in 1968–1973.