Talk:History of computer science

Please update request removed

I have removed the: "This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (September 2013)"

It is 10 years old and updates and anti-vandal actions have been done. Does another editor think that it should remain?BlueWren0123 (talk) 10:28, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

First programmable analog computer?

Why do I keep seeing this same exact line "The castle clock, a hydropowered mechanical astronomical clock invented by Al-Jazari in 1206, was the first programmable analog computer.[10][11][12]" posted on all the major computing history Wikipedia articles? For starters, I believe the claim is a bit sensationalized, as the word "programmable" is being used very loosely here. The term programmable is usually meant in the context of being able to provide instructions to a machine so that the machine can adjust its operations accordingly. In this scenario for Al-Jazari's clock (also very loosely associated with a computer, but it performs a computation of sorts, namely, keeping time and such, so I will grant that I suppose), the clock had to be manually recalibrated. Does this qualify as programmable? In addition to this, the actual cited source isn't even correct. The episode in question of Ancient Discoveries of the History Channel is Series 3 Episode 9, and the episode itself (available on YouTube) doesn't even support the claim that Al-Jazari's clock was the first programmable analog computer. The episode actually makes an even stranger claim: that Al-Jazari's clock was a "super computer". I also looked through source 11 and didn't find the claim supported on the page given. What is going on here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:82:200:8b20::3c04 (talk) 01:16, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Elements and Digitization of Computer

The source Elements and Digitization of Computer was used to support some of the text, and I removed it in Special:Diff/1052665714. The source is a book copyrighted 2019, and the reference was added to the article in 2020, Special:Diff/954176437. Page 10 of the book contains the exact sentences that it was used to support in the WP article (direct link), so my first thought was that there was a copyvio in this article. But since the text was in the WP article long before 2019, the copying was in the other direction. I haven't checked to see when it was added here, but in January 2010, most of it was in the article in the exact same form as today.

The reason I found it was that I was looking for sources from Educreation Publishing, a publishing house that offers self-publishing services. Elements and Digitization of Computer does not have a self-publishing label on the frontispiece, but it doesn't look like we can really trust that publisher's books at all. --bonadea contributions talk — Preceding undated comment added 13:32, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment

This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Clemson University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}} by PrimeBOT (talk) on 15:57, 2 January 2023 (UTC)