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Frances Allen has died

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Re: Frances Allen has died

#101
post #97
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I understand the feeling, but responding like this is also a move in the online shaming game / callout culture, and that's what we're trying to avoid here ( https://hn.algolia.com/?query=online%20shaming%20by%3Adang&s... ). The irony is that your and jameshart's motivations are likely similar. You're both reacting to a perceived slight and standing up for someone who you believe deserved to be treated better. Th…

> You're both reacting to a perceived slight Are they? The fundamental premise of jameshart's comment is that group membership is what counts. jamehart assumes graycat is a man, that men talk to women in certain (oppressive) ways, and therefore graycat must show humility--or else. The comment is nonsensical and incoherent interpreted any other way, and it obviously uses shame as a threat. A threat such as this is onl…

That seems like overinterpretation to me, based on the ideological battle lines of the moment. Even if you're right, though, I think people mostly do that because they want to stand up for someone.

Edit: maybe it would be of interest to add that, from the therapeutic work I've been involved in, it is clear that people's motivations in these areas can often be traced to family dynamics—which is to say, to love. Even when it doesn't look or sound like love, love is usually the driving force. I often think of Chesterton's line, "The soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him". You can say the same thing about political and ideological battles, which after all are (quoting a different celebrity) war by other means.

This is an optimistic view, because the more we can see and acknowledge that love in each other, the less we need to be in conflict. The challenge is that such love often goes through complex transformations and distortions which can be hard to disentangle.

Re: Frances Allen has died

#102
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should read it if you work on compilers, even now. But the reason is a bit different. It was the survey of the state of the art at the time, but obviously it is not the state of the art now. Then why should you read it? Because it is written in two layers. The first layer goes, we tried many optimization ideas, but only these were effective in practice: inlining, register allocation, etc. Others were not.…

Maybe I should call the backend for Objective-S Fran :-) > graph coloring register allocation I knew some people working on linear optimization, at the time one of the most performance-intensive applications around (with real money/competitiveness in many industries riding on it). The compiler that produced the best code, by quite a bit, was the IBM FORTRAN compiler (3090 was the preferred target at the time), which…

So that is were this Golang rule comes from.

Re: Frances Allen has died

#103
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should read it if you work on compilers, even now. But the reason is a bit different. It was the survey of the state of the art at the time, but obviously it is not the state of the art now. Then why should you read it? Because it is written in two layers. The first layer goes, we tried many optimization ideas, but only these were effective in practice: inlining, register allocation, etc. Others were not.…

Maybe I should call the backend for Objective-S Fran :-) > graph coloring register allocation I knew some people working on linear optimization, at the time one of the most performance-intensive applications around (with real money/competitiveness in many industries riding on it). The compiler that produced the best code, by quite a bit, was the IBM FORTRAN compiler (3090 was the preferred target at the time), which…

> For a simple compiler, we should also look at Wirth's works, and Wirth's rule: an optimization has to pay for itself, that is, the compiler compiling itself with the optimization both in the executable and in the source code has to be faster than without it in both places.

That will result in a compiler best at optimizing programs that behave like compilers. Which may be fine for simple compilers, but it's worth keeping in mind that will not be a good compiler for domains where the programs don't behave like compilers (such as scientific computing, or even ML these days) that also want high performance.

Re: Frances Allen has died

#104
post #91
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was more that C hindered optimization research. The interview was awesome as you said.

Ordered the book, but would you be willing to go in to the issues around C while I wait for it to arrive?

I don't have the book in my office, but essentially

"In our conversation she talks about what that transition was like as well as why it is important to increase the diversity in the field and how C has grievously wounded the study of computer science."

Re: Frances Allen has died

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure you are just trying to share a memory of interacting with an illustrious colleague here - and my sympathies go to you as it’s always a shock to learn of the passing of someone you worked with. But I think you maybe need to work on how you present this anecdote - as it is, it reads like you tried to mansplain her own research to a Turing Award winner. I hope you approached with more humility than this telling…

While I suppose it's possible someone was writing PL/I quite recently, the more probable option is that this story is from the late 60s.

At least as of when I was at IBM several years ago, PL/I and derived languages are still in widespread use in the IBM ecosystem for both high-level and low-level coding.

Re: Frances Allen has died

#106
post #101
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're both reacting to a perceived slight Are they? The fundamental premise of jameshart's comment is that group membership is what counts. jamehart assumes graycat is a man, that men talk to women in certain (oppressive) ways, and therefore graycat must show humility--or else. The comment is nonsensical and incoherent interpreted any other way, and it obviously uses shame as a threat. A threat such as this is onl…

That seems like overinterpretation to me, based on the ideological battle lines of the moment. Even if you're right, though, I think people mostly do that because they want to stand up for someone. Edit: maybe it would be of interest to add that, from the therapeutic work I've been involved in, it is clear that people's motivations in these areas can often be traced to family dynamics—which is to say, to love. Even w…

I believe in treating people with justice, which means to treat each person as they deserve to be treated.

So long as I believe a person is merely mistaken--that is, they lack evidence or the proper method of thinking, but are otherwise virtuous--then I will forgive them a thousand grievances and "acknowledge [the] love" in them. If they are important to me and I don't have to give up something more important, I would be willing to invest the time to bridge our differences. A relationship is the earned reward of the participants' virtues.

But if a person consciously takes a single step toward evil, they are a threat to my life. It would be self-destructive for me to try to see the love in the thug mugging me at gunpoint. It disrespects the people I admire and destroys the value of those positive relationships. Such a person might work to reform their character, but I have no obligation toward them.

I've come to the conclusion there are people in this world who act out of hatred for life and fear of living.

There are soldiers who fight for evil causes, and they are evil. Robert E Lee was offered a senior role in the Union army, but chose to fight for the Confederates. Some might say he fought for love of southern culture or his home or family or any number of other inessential factors; they evade the essential that Lee fought to preserve slavery.

There are soldiers who fight for good causes, and they are good. Sherman fought slavery and he obliterated everything in his path that supported slavery.

To equivocate between the two rewards the wicked and damns the good. Any ethical method that fails to distinguish the essential difference between the two is at best useless, and at worst a tool in the service of evil.

Minimizing conflict is a standard that is anti-life. We should be in conflict with evil. The test I apply in online discussion is to ask myself "What is this person advocating for? If this person achieved their ideal outcome, what would that look like?"

The opinion I've come to regarding comments like jameshart's is that they actively advocate for nothing--nihilism. I don't see any evidence indicating they want to replace something bad with something good. In this case, they want to replace a sentimental anecdote with silence.

By the way, I know these views are radically different. If you are curious about other applications or how it might apply to family interactions, PM me and I'd be happy to chat.

Re: Frances Allen has died

#107
My dad should have married her. Same story except Spartans instead of Wolverines and he went into Defense instead of IBM, and he’s older and still rockin’ Siri on his AppleWatch.

Re: Frances Allen has died

#108

I'd recommend reading her interview in Coders At Work. I never realized that compilers were already a flourishing field by the time C came around, and that C actually ended up having some negative effects in compiler dev.

How did C have negative effects on compiler dev? Did everyone else get a lobotomy, and forget how to do what they already knew?

It was more that C hindered optimization research.

Re: Frances Allen has died

#110
post #29

Fran and I were on the same floor at IBM's Watson lab. I was in an AI project doing applied math, e.g., some optimization, and mathematical statistics (for the AI work we were doing, system monitoring, i.e., anomaly detection, better than our AI work!). She was regarded as a major expert in compiling and numerical codes for scientific computing. I heard that she was working on a software product that among many other…

Hey, I just wanted to thank you for your reply covering the two semesters of stochastics in a condensed reply nearly 11 months ago in a different thread. I got too distracted reading up on it I forgot to reply. I cant tell you how much that helped with putting it all together conceptually. Given there is no way to reply to it now or dm you I figured this was the next best thing. Also anyway to get in contact with you with any future questions outside of here? especially since you mentioned you were previously working on an AI project. Any thoughts on High-Dimensional Statistics: A Non-Asymptotic Viewpoint by A. Martin Wainwright? It's currently what I'm trudging along through. You wouldn't happen to have a graycatmathhelp@email would you? thanks again
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