12 ms·
* It turned out you could do it: I programmed it for the IBM 704.* Anyone else find this comment motivating? It kind of sums up a moment of reflection I guess
by dca 17y ago
* It turned out you could do it: I programmed it for the IBM 704.*
Anyone else find this comment motivating? It kind of sums up a moment of reflection I guess I somehow aspire to. Find an insanely difficult challenge, that you deem important enough to devote a significant amount of time and energy to, and then one day: "It turns out you could do it: I programmed it for the ${preferred architecture}." Thanks Doug^H^H^H^H hold on - didn't Steve Russell implement McCarthy's original Lisp on the IBM 704 - not Doug McIlroy. What am I missing that pulled me away from my moment of zen here?
- gruseom 17y agoI took him to mean that he had programmed a subroutine that could call itself, but only as a curiosity, and that it was McCarthy's talk that made it clear for the first time what was important about recursion. Speaking of Steve Russell, does anybody know what became of him? It's extraordinary that he wrote both the first Lisp interpreter and the first computer game.
- dca 17y agoOk, I see that now. Thanks. Not sure about Steve Russell, but I agree that is rather extraordinary.
- leoc 17y agoAnd continuations, apparently. As of 2002, he was apparently working in embedded for Nohau Corporation: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/28/technology/a-long-time-ago-in-a-lab-far-away.html?pagewanted=2 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/28/technology/a-long-time-ago...
- gruseom 17y agoThat's a really interesting article about the guys who created Spacewar. I hadn't realized, for example, that there were six of them. Anyway, you should post it in its own right.