World of Computer Science

Flicking through a single volume of this encyclopaedia I was surprised and flattered at how few terms were unknown to me: do I know more than I thought, or do computers and computing science pervade our lives to such an extent? On the other hand, familiarity can be deceptive: you won’t put this bootstrap in your shoe, nor will you have any luck waiting for this bus; the core dump has nothing to do with waste products from edible fruits, while a balanced tree sounds a nice idea, but has nothing to do with what you find in forests. These...