3 ms·

When we talk latency, nanoseconds etc. I am always fond to remember the things Grace Hopper had to say about it to put it into perspective. https://www.youtube

by Bjoern 14y ago

When we talk latency, nanoseconds etc. I am always fond to remember the things Grace Hopper had to say about it to put it into perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8

SilasX 14y ago
Non-video summary?
- lotharbot 14y ago
  Without a good feel for a billion, or a billionth, it's hard to get a feel for a nanosecond. Visualization for a nanosecond: a piece of wire 11.8 inches long, which is the maximum distance light/electricity can travel in 1 ns. A microsecond is a coil of wire 984 feet long. So if you're trying to understand why it takes so dang long to send a message via satellite or whatever, just understand that there's a whole bunch of nano/micro/milli-seconds between here and there. This also explains why computers must be small to be fast. (Background: Rear Admiral Grace Hopper started programming on the Harvard Mark I in 1944, and wrote the first ever compiler in 1952 on the UNIVAC I. She earned the nickname "Grandma Cobol". Info via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper , which also summarizes this video in the "anecdotes" section.)
  - kragen 14y ago
    It's not quite clear what the first ever compiler was, since "compiler" is kind of a fuzzy category, but Rear Admiral Hopper might have given that credit to Betty Holberton.
    - lotharbot 14y ago
      Interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Holberton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Holberton >> in 1997, she received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award from the IEE Computer Society for developing the sort-merge generator which, according to IEEE, "inspired the first ideas about compilation." Whereas Hopper coined the term "compiler" and wrote the first one that's recognized as such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_compiler_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_compiler_constructi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-0_programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-0_programming_language
      - kragen 14y ago
        Indeed. But A-0 isn't what we'd call a "compiler" today. It was a gradual evolution from Holberton's work (1948? 1949?) through A-0 in 1952, up to, say, 1957, when the first optimizing FORTRAN compiler was shipped, which is definitely what we would call a compiler today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_compiler_writing#First_compilers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_compiler_writing#Fi...

by Bjoern 14y ago

SilasX 14y ago

Non-video summary?

lotharbot 14y ago
Without a good feel for a billion, or a billionth, it's hard to get a feel for a nanosecond. Visualization for a nanosecond: a piece of wire 11.8 inches long, which is the maximum distance light/electricity can travel in 1 ns. A microsecond is a coil of wire 984 feet long. So if you're trying to understand why it takes so dang long to send a message via satellite or whatever, just understand that there's a whole bunch of nano/micro/milli-seconds between here and there. This also explains why computers must be small to be fast. (Background: Rear Admiral Grace Hopper started programming on the Harvard Mark I in 1944, and wrote the first ever compiler in 1952 on the UNIVAC I. She earned the nickname "Grandma Cobol". Info via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper , which also summarizes this video in the "anecdotes" section.)
- kragen 14y ago
  It's not quite clear what the first ever compiler was, since "compiler" is kind of a fuzzy category, but Rear Admiral Hopper might have given that credit to Betty Holberton.
  - lotharbot 14y ago
    Interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Holberton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Holberton >> in 1997, she received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award from the IEE Computer Society for developing the sort-merge generator which, according to IEEE, "inspired the first ideas about compilation." Whereas Hopper coined the term "compiler" and wrote the first one that's recognized as such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_compiler_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_compiler_constructi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-0_programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-0_programming_language
    - kragen 14y ago
      Indeed. But A-0 isn't what we'd call a "compiler" today. It was a gradual evolution from Holberton's work (1948? 1949?) through A-0 in 1952, up to, say, 1957, when the first optimizing FORTRAN compiler was shipped, which is definitely what we would call a compiler today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_compiler_writing#First_compilers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_compiler_writing#Fi...