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Poor journalism and writing ruined an otherwise thoughtful piece of influential computer scientist. The root cause probably is that the author does not underst

Poor journalism and writing ruined an otherwise thoughtful piece of influential computer scientist. The root cause probably is that the author does not understand the ideas well enough, so he/she is urged to overblown the implications...

tpmx 7y ago
In this case the author's background is "PhD in Mathematics at Dartmouth College, Master of Arts in Teaching Mathematics at Smith College, and BA in Anthropology at Bard College." With that background I wouldn't expect expectise in programming or programming language history. It seems like the latter is actually sort of an actual academic field, albeit a bit small. https://www.amazon.com/History-Programming-Languages-Thomas-Bergin/dp/0201895021 https://www.amazon.com/History-Programming-Languages-Thomas-... (including a chapter on CLU/Barbara Liskov) is a fantastic collection of papers from the "ACM/SIGPLAN Second History of Programming Languages Conference".). It was my first purchase from Mr Bezos' UK online book store some time in 1999 or so; I think. This is her paper from that book: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1057826 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1057826
- justicezyx 7y ago
  Then it is baffling that this article comes to be...
  - tpmx 7y ago
    Maybe I wasn't clear. The article author has zero academic experience in programming languages, afaik. Barbara Liskov has, though.
_bxg1 7y ago
Yeah, "You came of age professionally during the development of artificial intelligence" in the opening question told me right off the bat that something was off with the interviewer. Some version of AI research has been around nearly as long as computers themselves, but the late 60s weren't exactly a focal point like, say, the 80s were. Plus, her primary contribution to computer science has little to do with AI directly. It felt like misunderstanding and/or a wide reach for a hot topic.
- farazbabar 7y ago
  Perceptron, which preceded both the minsky induced AI winter and the current hype around deep learning was in fact invented in 1958.

tpmx 7y ago

In this case the author's background is "PhD in Mathematics at Dartmouth College, Master of Arts in Teaching Mathematics at Smith College, and BA in Anthropology at Bard College." With that background I wouldn't expect expectise in programming or programming language history. It seems like the latter is actually sort of an actual academic field, albeit a bit small. https://www.amazon.com/History-Programming-Languages-Thomas-Bergin/dp/0201895021 https://www.amazon.com/History-Programming-Languages-Thomas-... (including a chapter on CLU/Barbara Liskov) is a fantastic collection of papers from the "ACM/SIGPLAN Second History of Programming Languages Conference".). It was my first purchase from Mr Bezos' UK online book store some time in 1999 or so; I think. This is her paper from that book: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1057826 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1057826

justicezyx 7y ago
Then it is baffling that this article comes to be...
- tpmx 7y ago
  Maybe I wasn't clear. The article author has zero academic experience in programming languages, afaik. Barbara Liskov has, though.

_bxg1 7y ago

Yeah, "You came of age professionally during the development of artificial intelligence" in the opening question told me right off the bat that something was off with the interviewer. Some version of AI research has been around nearly as long as computers themselves, but the late 60s weren't exactly a focal point like, say, the 80s were. Plus, her primary contribution to computer science has little to do with AI directly. It felt like misunderstanding and/or a wide reach for a hot topic.

farazbabar 7y ago
Perceptron, which preceded both the minsky induced AI winter and the current hype around deep learning was in fact invented in 1958.