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I actually find the simplicity of computing devices staggering and beautiful. If the earth was wiped out tomorrow, one would only need to remember what a turing

I actually find the simplicity of computing devices staggering and beautiful. If the earth was wiped out tomorrow, one would only need to remember what a turing machine is and how to make a semiconductor to rebuild them. Also, the rant becomes too broad to have a point.

Swizec 15y ago
It's only simple and elegant on paper. Computer Science is beautifully simple. Computer Engineering is a gory mess.
- jarek 15y ago
  What about computer engineering do you feel is messy? To me, it all comes down to basic physics, arranged rather elegantly.
Sharlin 15y ago
And yet it took 50000 years worth of accumulated Homo sapiens thought to come up with a formalism describing universal computation and a model of the Nature accurate enough to understand semiconductors.
- zerostar07 15y ago
  yes, trial and error is a lengthy process
DougBTX 15y ago
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." One of the interesting points raised in the article is that even if we had the tech to shine UV light onto plates of silicon, we'd need to reinvent a previous generation of computers so that we could design modern chips to fabricate.
0x12 15y ago
Good luck with that. Just making glass is going to take you a while. Making semiconductors at a scale that you can start thinking of building a working computer will take you quite a bit longer. It's simple in principle. It would be far easier to stuff a bunch of people in rooms with paper (assuming you could make that) and pencils (ditto) and have them execute your program.
- zerostar07 15y ago
  but that's how it started! http://xkcd.com/505/ http://xkcd.com/505/
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  Among other things, "how to make a semiconductor" is like that joke about how to make a million dollars: "First, you take a million dollars..." You're going to spend years just bootstrapping your metal refinery to the point where you can bootstrap your machine shop to the point where you can bootstrap your chemical industry to the point where you can produce undoped silicon of sufficient purity to make a decent integrated circuit. Sure, maybe you can slap together a handful of cheesy transistors to rival the first-ever transistor (Google up the picture of the first transistor; it's hilarious; you can practically smell the hot glue wafting from that picture) but it takes a bunch of transistors to make a computer, and you'd probably like your computer to get through three whole clock cycles before melting. You might actually be better off just recapitulating history by starting with vacuum tubes. You'll need to master glassblowing and vacuum pumps to build semiconductors anyway, and tubes have lots of handy uses. (You could build an oscilloscope, which you will also need.) But you'll need to bootstrap your metal wire industry (generators aren't that hard to make if you can get hundreds of continuous feet of insulated wire...) and note that you'd better be very careful until you've had time to bootstrap your plastics industry; there are scary stories from the early days of TV when they had high-voltage circuits but nothing to insulate the wires with but varnish and paper...
  - prodigal_erik 15y ago
    Jeri Ellsworth managed to make transistors in a pottery kiln, starting with modern wafers. She said it took three years of research and interviewing graybeards who were working on it in the 1970s. Makes me hope she wrote that stuff down.
notaddicted 15y ago
There are a few abstractions that can take you a long way towards understanding ... basically the standard computer engineering curriculum: TCP, Posix, C, the von Neumann architecture, digital logic.
- jff 15y ago
  In my opinion, though, a computer engineer is better served working in the other direction :) Or, perhaps, from both ends at once--that's how we did it at school, and it worked out OK.
spitfire 15y ago
http://www.homebrewcpu.com/ http://www.homebrewcpu.com/ User/data segments, 16bit data operations, user/supervisor modes, address translation, mmio and DMA. 8meg address space, 128K per process. Runs Minix (Precursor to Linux). 200TTL logic chips. How quickly do you think you could build that? My bet, is if you had a dedicated group of people within 2 years you'd have a mhz computer again. It's easier the second time around. EDIT: http://www.holmea.demon.co.uk/Mk1/Architecture.htm http://www.holmea.demon.co.uk/Mk1/Architecture.htm Homemade apollo guidance computer http://klabs.org/history/build_agc/ http://klabs.org/history/build_agc/
- 0x12 15y ago
  TTL was several steps up from ordinary transistors, I don't see how that would be a valid shortcut. You'd still have to make silicon first, as well as a process to create integrated circuits. Simple ones, but still.
njharman 15y ago
This comment is for all the decedent comments worrying about silicon wafers. Computers were possible long before electronics, see Babbage. Computers were built long before integrated circuits and silicon wafers, see Vacuum tubes.

Swizec 15y ago

It's only simple and elegant on paper. Computer Science is beautifully simple. Computer Engineering is a gory mess.

jarek 15y ago
What about computer engineering do you feel is messy? To me, it all comes down to basic physics, arranged rather elegantly.

Sharlin 15y ago

And yet it took 50000 years worth of accumulated Homo sapiens thought to come up with a formalism describing universal computation and a model of the Nature accurate enough to understand semiconductors.

zerostar07 15y ago
yes, trial and error is a lengthy process

DougBTX 15y ago

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." One of the interesting points raised in the article is that even if we had the tech to shine UV light onto plates of silicon, we'd need to reinvent a previous generation of computers so that we could design modern chips to fabricate.

0x12 15y ago

Good luck with that. Just making glass is going to take you a while. Making semiconductors at a scale that you can start thinking of building a working computer will take you quite a bit longer. It's simple in principle. It would be far easier to stuff a bunch of people in rooms with paper (assuming you could make that) and pencils (ditto) and have them execute your program.

zerostar07 15y ago
but that's how it started! http://xkcd.com/505/ http://xkcd.com/505/
mechanical_fish 15y ago
Among other things, "how to make a semiconductor" is like that joke about how to make a million dollars: "First, you take a million dollars..." You're going to spend years just bootstrapping your metal refinery to the point where you can bootstrap your machine shop to the point where you can bootstrap your chemical industry to the point where you can produce undoped silicon of sufficient purity to make a decent integrated circuit. Sure, maybe you can slap together a handful of cheesy transistors to rival the first-ever transistor (Google up the picture of the first transistor; it's hilarious; you can practically smell the hot glue wafting from that picture) but it takes a bunch of transistors to make a computer, and you'd probably like your computer to get through three whole clock cycles before melting. You might actually be better off just recapitulating history by starting with vacuum tubes. You'll need to master glassblowing and vacuum pumps to build semiconductors anyway, and tubes have lots of handy uses. (You could build an oscilloscope, which you will also need.) But you'll need to bootstrap your metal wire industry (generators aren't that hard to make if you can get hundreds of continuous feet of insulated wire...) and note that you'd better be very careful until you've had time to bootstrap your plastics industry; there are scary stories from the early days of TV when they had high-voltage circuits but nothing to insulate the wires with but varnish and paper...
- prodigal_erik 15y ago
  Jeri Ellsworth managed to make transistors in a pottery kiln, starting with modern wafers. She said it took three years of research and interviewing graybeards who were working on it in the 1970s. Makes me hope she wrote that stuff down.

notaddicted 15y ago

There are a few abstractions that can take you a long way towards understanding ... basically the standard computer engineering curriculum: TCP, Posix, C, the von Neumann architecture, digital logic.

jff 15y ago
In my opinion, though, a computer engineer is better served working in the other direction :) Or, perhaps, from both ends at once--that's how we did it at school, and it worked out OK.

spitfire 15y ago

http://www.homebrewcpu.com/ http://www.homebrewcpu.com/ User/data segments, 16bit data operations, user/supervisor modes, address translation, mmio and DMA. 8meg address space, 128K per process. Runs Minix (Precursor to Linux). 200TTL logic chips. How quickly do you think you could build that? My bet, is if you had a dedicated group of people within 2 years you'd have a mhz computer again. It's easier the second time around. EDIT: http://www.holmea.demon.co.uk/Mk1/Architecture.htm http://www.holmea.demon.co.uk/Mk1/Architecture.htm Homemade apollo guidance computer http://klabs.org/history/build_agc/ http://klabs.org/history/build_agc/

0x12 15y ago
TTL was several steps up from ordinary transistors, I don't see how that would be a valid shortcut. You'd still have to make silicon first, as well as a process to create integrated circuits. Simple ones, but still.

njharman 15y ago

This comment is for all the decedent comments worrying about silicon wafers. Computers were possible long before electronics, see Babbage. Computers were built long before integrated circuits and silicon wafers, see Vacuum tubes.