You first sentences already suggest one comparison between the histories of computing and philosophy: history of computing ought to be much easier. Most of it is still in living memory. Yet somehow, the philosophy people manage it while we computing people rarely bother.
I always think it is great value to have a whole range of history of X courses.
I once thought about a series of PHYS classes that focus on historical ideas and experiments. Students are supposed to replicate the experiments. They have to read book chapters and papers.
History of physics is another history where we have been extremely dependent on the "substrate". Better instruments and capacity to analyze results, obviously, but also advances in mathematics.
