An ag(e)ing hacker - posts tagged as "my-masters"

I will remember John McCarthy — 2011-10-25 23:55 Updated: 2014-07-26 14:57

I’ve just learned that Professor John McCarthy (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JohnMcCarthy(computerscientist)>) died two days ago on October 23, at the age of 84. He was the father of Lisp, Artificial Intelligence, Non-Monotonic Logics and Situation Calculus; and garbage collection, and time-sharing. An amusingly absent-minded brilliant mathematician and thinker with philosophical inclinations, and a technological optimist. I’ve loved reading his lightly sketched deep thoughts in his plain unassuming style(1), so different from the pretentious generations of big-egoed Lispers who came after him, myself included. And who even cares now if I agree with what he said one hundred percent, or not; I’ve never met [...] Read more

How I learned procedural abstraction and the wonder of science — 2011-09-19 05:06 Updated: 2022-12-04 22:28

Inspired by a happy “discovery” I made today, I’ve written this instead of finishing the post about identity. The abandoned tape This story began on a summer evening of the late Eighties when I was 10, maybe 11. I was at some small country fair near home with my brother, five years younger than me — quite a big difference back then. My brother found an audio cassette discarded on the ground, and wanted to take it home; it looked dirty and I remember that I didn’t want to pick it up at first, but I guess I wasn’t too [...] Read more