
Computer Software (1984) - BerislavLopac
https://fermatslibrary.com/s/computer-software
======
jdblair
Looking at this reminds me of reading Scientific American when I was a child.
The articles were in-depth, scholarly, and often difficult, even when
simplified for general consumption. I know Scientific American changed its
format to survive, but I miss this rigorous style.

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szemet
I've just bought this Scientific American issue a week ago in an used book
store for around 2$. Mainly because of Wirth and Kay and to read some early
Wolfram. Strange coincidence to see this here now.

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Dangeranger
If you are interested in reading the original paper without the annotations,
as I was, you can find it on Alan's Viewpoints Research Institute site here
[0].

[0]
[http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr1984001_comp_soft.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr1984001_comp_soft.pdf)

~~~
svat
Er, can't you just ignore the annotations? They are in a different part of the
screen and don't modify the original paper. Not affiliated with this website
but wondering why you felt the need to seek the original paper from a
different place when it's clearly right there...

~~~
rudedogg
Not the parent but when you click it slides out a sidebar to show the
discussions, covering the content. The annotations also take up a lot of space
making the text smaller.

On the plus side they (Fermat's Library) converted it to text, where the PDF
versions are all image scans.

~~~
cellularmitosis
I'm new to Fermat's Library, but I'm perplexed by what they've done. They
appear to have OCR'ed the paper, and it appears that you can select a region
of text, but if you copy that region and paste it, it consists entirely of
garbage characters. Similarly, they've somehow broken CMD+f.

~~~
svat
Looking at the HTML source, it appears they've used pdf2htmlEX:
[https://github.com/coolwanglu/pdf2htmlEX](https://github.com/coolwanglu/pdf2htmlEX)
/
[http://coolwanglu.github.io/pdf2htmlEX/](http://coolwanglu.github.io/pdf2htmlEX/)
\-- the first demo there (which is also from a scan) also seems to have the
same property you mentioned.

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bch
> “What [the computer field] needs first is a William of Occam, who said
> “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” The idea that it is worth
> while to put considerable effort into eliminating complexity and
> establishing the simple had a lot to do with the rise of modern science and
> mathematics, particularly from the standpoint of creating new aesthetics...

The tricky thing is he argues for “sophistication” here[0], which on the
surface seems antithetical.

Picking (and committing-to) a (correct) abstraction can be tricky. Also, these
“axioms” are often made true by useless qualifiers like “unnecessary”
complexity, or even “complexity”. If it’s _required_ , it’s not “complexity”,
but a necessary implementation detail. Pick in good faith, keep a loose grip,
have fun.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs?t=345](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs?t=345)

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legel
Alan Kay’s YC Startup School lectures “How to Invent the Future” really
influenced me, wonderful humanitarian wisdom:
[https://www.startupschool.org/videos/11](https://www.startupschool.org/videos/11)

It was also a privilege conversing with him via email about them and
otherwise, here are a few interesting quotes from him: “By all means, please
take a look at my colleague Bret Victor's ideas -- he is one of the two or
three strongest thinkers to emerge since Engelbart.” \+ “Minsky's "Society of
Mind" (and the later "The Emotion Machine") are still very good evokers of
what needs to be done. (It is generally more complex that most people would
like to think and do).”

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godelmachine
Do we have a transcript of “How to Invent the Future” available?

I prefer to read.

~~~
tlb
Click "Lecture Transcript" below the video.

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aidenn0
I found it somewhat humorous that at every level above Fortran in the diagram
of language abstraction level there was an entry for Lisp.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, Lisp is _the_ language family where you get to choose the level of
abstraction you need.

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c3534l
I love the care taken in writing artfully and entertainingly.

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russfink
That graphic on inheritance programming - is that why it's called a web
"browser?" (This graphic is a great explanation of object oriented
programming!)

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kazinator
Nice how in the diagram only LISP appears under HLL, VHLL and UHLL.

