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Sharla Boehm, the programmer whose code underpins the Internet

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Sharla Boehm, the programmer whose code underpins the Internet

#21

Post by Aerolfos »

themafia wrote: post #5

> If this was 2025, this would be called machine learning because that's really what it was. It would be called "machine learning" because that's the buzzword du jour. > She was teaching the network to learn how to respond to nodes dropping out. That's just called "writing software" not "teaching the network." > Machine learning was definitely nonexistent at that point. Are you sure about that? > And yet, if you look…

> > Machine learning was definitely nonexistent at that point.

> Are you sure about that?

Incredible statement to make, not only did machine learning exist, but neural networks existed!

The first perceptrons were built in the 50s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron

If you take a machine learning class, what is the most basic network you will probably build/learn about as an introduction? The MLP - multi-layer perceptron.

It's not even remotely obscure to know ML existed in the 50s and 60s.

Re: Sharla Boehm, the programmer whose code underpins the Internet

#23

Post by 9x39 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #13

This would have made for an interesting article, but as a podcast transcript it's virtually unreadable. It also reads like they're talking to children. The Wikipedia article is much better, but too short: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharla_Boehm

It's sort of the NPR-style playbook, minus the tonality, perhaps.

Some audiences are logical and want concise, dense information, others want relational and narrative approaches.

Re: Sharla Boehm, the programmer whose code underpins the Internet

#24

Post by 9x39 »

themafia wrote: post #5

> If this was 2025, this would be called machine learning because that's really what it was. It would be called "machine learning" because that's the buzzword du jour. > She was teaching the network to learn how to respond to nodes dropping out. That's just called "writing software" not "teaching the network." > Machine learning was definitely nonexistent at that point. Are you sure about that? > And yet, if you look…

It's interesting reading how TTL evolved from the 'handover' field (p14-16).

Re: Sharla Boehm, the programmer whose code underpins the Internet

#25

Post by luma »

anigbrowl wrote: post #13

This would have made for an interesting article, but as a podcast transcript it's virtually unreadable. It also reads like they're talking to children. The Wikipedia article is much better, but too short: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharla_Boehm

It's also completely blocked for me, thanks for a link I can actually read!

Re: Sharla Boehm, the programmer whose code underpins the Internet

#27

Post by dgacmu »

cmiles74 wrote: post #12
readthenotes1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it was a simulation written in Fortran, the odds of it actually being used for routing is pretty small.

I bet someone read the paper she co-authored and that might have had some influence on the code that they ended up writing. Her husband worked on ARPAnet, surely he would have mentioned that paper to someone!

Her husband almost certainly didn't need to - she co-authored with Paul Baran; the insights from this work were directly influential on his subsequent work, and both this work and RAND's larger corpus of work in this area were part of the reference materials used by ARPA (which we know today as DARPA) began the Arpanet project, which was the foundation for today's Internet.

Re: Sharla Boehm, the programmer whose code underpins the Internet

#29

Post by classichasclass »

eichin wrote: post #22
readthenotes1 wrote: post #10

And married to Barry Boehm of Software Engineering Economics fame. That was one smart couple!

Ah, not related to Hans Boehm of the Boehm GC though (the Barry Boehm page even has a "not to be confused with" header.)

I thought of that too. Seems like the right last name to have.
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