computer science

Stuart Feldman

Stuart Feldman is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Stuart Feldman rather than just read about it. In short: Stuart Feldman is an American computer scientist. He is best known as the creator of the computer software program Make.

Key takeaways

Stuart Feldman belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Stuart Feldman to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Stuart Feldman from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Stuart Feldman is an American computer scientist. He is best known as the creator of the computer software program Make. He was also an author of the first Fortran 77 compiler, was part of the original group at Bell Labs that created the Unix operating system, and participated in development of the ALTRAN and EFL programming languages. Feldman is the president of Schmidt Sciences. He was previously Chief Scientist at Schmidt Futures, and was a member of the dean's External Advisory Board at the University of Michigan School of Information. He was previously Vice President, Engineering, East Coast, at Google, and before that Vice President of Computer Science at IBM Research. Feldman has served on the board of the Computing Research Association (CRA) and of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International). He was chair of ACM SIGPLAN and founding chair of ACM SIGecom. He was elected the President of the ACM in 2006. Feldman is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of ACM Queue, a magazine he helped found with Steve Bourne. He has also served on the editorial boards of IEEE Internet Computing and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. He received an A.B. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2010 the University of Waterloo awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Mathematics. Feldman became a Fellow of the IEEE in 1991, Fellow of the ACM in 1995, and Fellow of the AAAS in 2007. In 2003, he was awarded ACM's Software System Award for his creation of Make.

References

External links Photo of Feldman in "External Advisory Board - University of Michigan School of Information"

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stuart Feldman

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stuart Feldman claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Stuart Feldman before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Stuart Feldman ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Stuart Feldman

In research: Stuart Feldman appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Stuart Feldman in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Stuart Feldman is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American computer scientists, Computer systems researchers, Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stuart Feldman outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Stuart Feldman in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Stuart Feldman means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Stuart Feldman out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Stuart Feldman in simple terms?

Stuart Feldman is an American computer scientist. He is best known as the creator of the computer software program Make.

Why does Stuart Feldman matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Stuart Feldman?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Stuart Feldman.