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That sounds like the old joke, "I can see that it works in practice but will it work in theory?" If the Burroughs guys both invented it and commercialized it th
by gruseom 15y ago
That sounds like the old joke, "I can see that it works in practice but will it work in theory?" If the Burroughs guys both invented it and commercialized it then surely they should get the credit for it.
The story is in this wonderful memoir: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856567 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856567 (with the relevant passage quoted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2928672 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2928672).
- bane 15y agoI agree, I hadn't heard of the Burroughs guys until this post. The two papers I linked to were always the earliest ones I was aware of. There's a surprising amount of stuff that gets built though without understanding all of the theory behind it. So it doesn't surprise me if a "pre-theory" example of VM was built. After all, we had the wheel for thousands of years before figuring out PI.