Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • Ah, finally real AI programming
    by s-zeng
  • > But if not, we’ve a number of years to survive yet before brainlike systems make their debut outside a handful of well-funded research labs.

    Took 40 some years, as it turned out.

    by jimbokun
  • Submission about a follow up conference 20 years later:

      Will Spiritual Robots Replace Humanity by 2100?
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50039614
    by so-cal-schemer
  • Found some insightful bits within this in a general 'principle/discipline of programming' sense, since it's written by an "outsider" yet in the presence of "the OGs"

    E.g.

    > The task of writing a program ... is traditionally characterized by a specific set of disciplines.

    > In essence, the programmer must define some sort of algorithm which will accomplish the objective, then map that algorithm onto the available resources of the computer using a specific set of tools — the programming language.

    > Conversion of an idea from its conceptual form into its coded form involves the acceptance of *nearly brutal language restrictions* which result in strict formalization of the process.

    > The programmer starts with an idea of WHAT he wants the system to do, then spends hours or months describing HOW it should be done.

    > The generally-accepted complexity of this task has spawned some rather elaborate disciplines which reduce the probability of error.

    I think the fact that LLMs are "eating up" so much of software development is that software development itself never properly matured. It remained in this form for decades longer than it should've (for various reasons)

    by agambrahma
  • The HOPL 2 paper "The evolution of Lisp" https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/154766.155373 covers about 1963-1992.
    by leoc
  • It was fun to realize this is the personal site of the BEHEMOTH bike creator, as seen at the Computer History Museum.
    by fleeno
  • I'll always lament not grabbing a Xerox Alto for $50 from a SV thrift store at 15. I literally cried as we drove off. My dad turned around and it was already gone when we got back.
    by so-cal-schemer
  • Related:

    LISP Comes of Age - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28025136 - Aug 2021 (7 comments)

    Lisp Comes of Age (1980) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22578824 - March 2020 (110 comments)

    by dang

Explore Birbla archives