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"Real hardware" is also an abstract machine. Until you get to the level of each individual transistor, it's hardware abstractions all the way down. Caches, reor

"Real hardware" is also an abstract machine. Until you get to the level of each individual transistor, it's hardware abstractions all the way down. Caches, reorder buffers, load and store buffers, instruction decoding are all abstract concepts sitting at a much higher level than the individual transistor. Those abstractions are there mostly for the purpose of speeding up code execution, but also for enabling hardware designers to think about the machine in terms of real-world concepts and not just as an incomprehensible mind-blowing collection of a few billion transistors.

SuperscalarMeme 7y ago
And I bet you physicists argue that transistors are just abstractions of semiconductors
- j9461701 7y ago
  Which is, in turn, merely an abstraction over the actual quantum physics that governs what's really happening on the silicon. And quantum physics might itself one day may be found to be a higher level abstraction of what's really really going on, as happened with Newtonian physics before it. It's abstractions all the way down. I don't know why they're so maligned by programmers, they're the only way any work gets done.
  - diydsp 7y ago
    heh and it's even worse than that, because near the quantum level, we're mainly finding reflections of our own psychology, psyche and societal norms. This is why saying sth is "not how the machine works" is a fallacy of black and white thinking and not useful unless one is ready to be very specific abt how it resembles the machine and doesn't. wrt C, the smartest thing to do is use it wisely and avoid dragons, the same way we e.g. use chemistry to make useful products without performing operations in unstable environments. And surround it with an appropriate layer of cultural expectations - keeping humans in the loop. You don't just do what the computer tells you, you use it to help you make judgments, but ultimately take responsibility yourself. One can see this in Rust's efforts to not only develop a language, but a conscious culture around it. This will be successful until, like a 51% attack, it is outmaneuvered. Anyway...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- guerrilla 7y ago
  You dont need to go to physics for that, a datasheet on any real transister will tell you that.

SuperscalarMeme 7y ago

And I bet you physicists argue that transistors are just abstractions of semiconductors

j9461701 7y ago
Which is, in turn, merely an abstraction over the actual quantum physics that governs what's really happening on the silicon. And quantum physics might itself one day may be found to be a higher level abstraction of what's really really going on, as happened with Newtonian physics before it. It's abstractions all the way down. I don't know why they're so maligned by programmers, they're the only way any work gets done.
- diydsp 7y ago
  heh and it's even worse than that, because near the quantum level, we're mainly finding reflections of our own psychology, psyche and societal norms. This is why saying sth is "not how the machine works" is a fallacy of black and white thinking and not useful unless one is ready to be very specific abt how it resembles the machine and doesn't. wrt C, the smartest thing to do is use it wisely and avoid dragons, the same way we e.g. use chemistry to make useful products without performing operations in unstable environments. And surround it with an appropriate layer of cultural expectations - keeping humans in the loop. You don't just do what the computer tells you, you use it to help you make judgments, but ultimately take responsibility yourself. One can see this in Rust's efforts to not only develop a language, but a conscious culture around it. This will be successful until, like a 51% attack, it is outmaneuvered. Anyway...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
guerrilla 7y ago
You dont need to go to physics for that, a datasheet on any real transister will tell you that.