5 ms·

I am 100% with you. I have infinite admiration for von Neumann's talents. He was the genius of the geniuses. I wish I could have a 10 minute chat with him. He'd

by zero_k 2y ago

I am 100% with you. I have infinite admiration for von Neumann's talents. He was the genius of the geniuses. I wish I could have a 10 minute chat with him. He'd blow my mind, I'm sure. I'd love to explain some of the research issues I'm working on to him, I have a feeling he'd nail them to the ground. His resume is absolutely insane. The dude invented merge sort and it's an effin' side-note to his work. Like, WAT. His achievements could fill the resume of 50 Nobel Laureate scientists. Plus apparently he had a CHARACTER, like a real one. Would have loved to shoot the sh&t with him.

satori99 2y ago
There were others in his league who have been mostly lost in history. When von Neumann first published a description of a stored-program binary computing machine in 1945, he cited only one paper -- which was co-authored by Walter Pitts; https://nautil.us/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic-235253/ https://nautil.us/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with...
- cmehdy 2y ago
  Thank you for sharing this, beautiful and tragic as it is.
pedrosorio 2y ago
> The dude invented merge sort and it's an effin' side-note to his work. Like, WAT. Inventing merge sort is not a particularly impressive intellectual achievement.
- dchftcs 2y ago
  It's trivial in an era where the concept of algorithms is established but less so back in the 1940s. You really had to be at the forefront to know that sorting algorithms are meaningful things to think about. But indeed mergesort is really not even a footnote of von Neuamnn's contributions to computing, which was perhaps not even 1/3 if his career. That's how much a giant he was.
  - 48864w6ui 2y ago
    Sorting was already a big thing in the punched card world. Edit: adp with cards had been a thing for half a century by the time digital machines appeared. IBM was founded in 1911; NCR 1884.
    - 082349872349872 2y ago
      The big advantage of electronic machines was speed. Early* digital computers didn't have much more memory than the card processors (64-128 bytes), but they weren't limited to cards/minute. For 150 cards/min, see http://www.righto.com/2017/11/identifying-early-ibm-computer-in.html http://www.righto.com/2017/11/identifying-early-ibm-computer... * EDIT: like ENIAC early. By MANIAC they already had ~5K of memory, which would've been unthinkable with the dieselpunk registers used by card machines: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-k0YcX-Qhvrw/WfxzfKNG1wI/AAAAAAABF6E/Q-DWOE7swbgauUIsySorRr0tCa-568E2ACHMYBhgL/w9999/counter.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-k0YcX-Qhvrw/WfxzfKNG1wI/A...
  - mkl 2y ago
    People have done merge sort, insertion sort, etc., by hand, for a very long time, probably centuries, and re-invented by many people. I would be very surprised if the steps had not been written down earlier. Algorithms done by hand, e.g. numerical methods, have been around for centuries too, so it's not that the concept was missing.
- 48864w6ui 2y ago
  Especially because merging was how card machines sorted large decks

by zero_k 2y ago

satori99 2y ago

There were others in his league who have been mostly lost in history. When von Neumann first published a description of a stored-program binary computing machine in 1945, he cited only one paper -- which was co-authored by Walter Pitts; https://nautil.us/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic-235253/ https://nautil.us/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with...

cmehdy 2y ago
Thank you for sharing this, beautiful and tragic as it is.

pedrosorio 2y ago

> The dude invented merge sort and it's an effin' side-note to his work. Like, WAT. Inventing merge sort is not a particularly impressive intellectual achievement.

dchftcs 2y ago
It's trivial in an era where the concept of algorithms is established but less so back in the 1940s. You really had to be at the forefront to know that sorting algorithms are meaningful things to think about. But indeed mergesort is really not even a footnote of von Neuamnn's contributions to computing, which was perhaps not even 1/3 if his career. That's how much a giant he was.
- 48864w6ui 2y ago
  Sorting was already a big thing in the punched card world. Edit: adp with cards had been a thing for half a century by the time digital machines appeared. IBM was founded in 1911; NCR 1884.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    The big advantage of electronic machines was speed. Early* digital computers didn't have much more memory than the card processors (64-128 bytes), but they weren't limited to cards/minute. For 150 cards/min, see http://www.righto.com/2017/11/identifying-early-ibm-computer-in.html http://www.righto.com/2017/11/identifying-early-ibm-computer... * EDIT: like ENIAC early. By MANIAC they already had ~5K of memory, which would've been unthinkable with the dieselpunk registers used by card machines: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-k0YcX-Qhvrw/WfxzfKNG1wI/AAAAAAABF6E/Q-DWOE7swbgauUIsySorRr0tCa-568E2ACHMYBhgL/w9999/counter.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-k0YcX-Qhvrw/WfxzfKNG1wI/A...
- mkl 2y ago
  People have done merge sort, insertion sort, etc., by hand, for a very long time, probably centuries, and re-invented by many people. I would be very surprised if the steps had not been written down earlier. Algorithms done by hand, e.g. numerical methods, have been around for centuries too, so it's not that the concept was missing.
48864w6ui 2y ago
Especially because merging was how card machines sorted large decks