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John McCarthy Has Died

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Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#221

Post by getsat »

agavin wrote: post #208

For nearly two decades I was a diehard LISP advocate. I even forced all my programers to code three Crash Bandicoot and four Jak & Daxter games in custom LISP dialects that I wrote the compilers for (an article on one here http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/03/12/making-crash-ban... ). But by the mid 2000s I started doing the kind of programming I used to do in LISP in Ruby. It's not that Ruby is a better language…

You!

Reading about all the cool stuff you guys did with GOOL is the reason I got into Lisp.

Awesome to see that you post here on HN. :)

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#224

Post by malkia »

getsat wrote: post #221
agavin wrote: post #208

For nearly two decades I was a diehard LISP advocate. I even forced all my programers to code three Crash Bandicoot and four Jak & Daxter games in custom LISP dialects that I wrote the compilers for (an article on one here http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/03/12/making-crash-ban... ). But by the mid 2000s I started doing the kind of programming I used to do in LISP in Ruby. It's not that Ruby is a better language…

You! Reading about all the cool stuff you guys did with GOOL is the reason I got into Lisp. Awesome to see that you post here on HN. :)

Same here!

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#225

Post by Game_Ender »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #175
rayiner wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment presupposes that advances in mathematics are more important than advances in social communication. Is Mozart less iconic because his achievements were in music?

I think it's more about how hard it is than how important. Facebook represents a lot of work but nothing that seems to demand superhuman insight; an army of Stanford CS grads supplied with pot and Red Bull could probably make a tolerable substitute in five or ten years. But it's far from certain any of them could ever produce the kind of work Turing or McCarthy brought us. (And I say this knowing I won't, either.)

I think an army of top end CS grads with caffeinated beverages is what Facebook currently employs.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#226

Post by bad_user »

thebigshane wrote: post #214
bad_user wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to write git if you have a CVS repo to store your work in Not to diminish your point or anything, but regarding Git, I'll just quote Linus Tolvards: For the first 10 years of kernel maintenance, we literally used tarballs and patches, which is a much superior source control management system than CVS is Basically Git started as a bunch of scripts written by Linux for dealing with "tarballs and patches" an…

I think Alan Kay would disagree with you: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in... The basic idea here is not to bash the current state of things but to try to understand something about the progress of coming up with fundamental new ideas and principles. I claim that we need really new ideas in most areas of computing, and I would like to know of any important and powerful ones that have been…

OMG, Alan Kay is on Stack Overflow? That's freaking awesome :)

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#227

Post by SoftwareMaven »

phillmv wrote: post #200
irahul wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the way of thinking isn't constant. It changes over time. A 15 year old you, a 25 year old you and a 50 year old you are all different people. A 500 year old you will most probably be a different person. There are people who resist change and disapprove of all viewpoints other their own, but I doubt it's an age thing. I see a lot of young people opposing gay marriages for instance.

We think differently as we age. Have you spent any amount of time arguing with old people? You can't teach an old dog new tricks, etc. Ideas tend to propagate in generations - it's often necessary for the old guard to die off before a new idea will be accepted, whether this is in art, or science, or politics or whatever. As new people crop up that aren't reputationally invested in a certain idea it allows more ideas…

You can't teach an old dog new tricks

Good to see ageism is alive and well.

I know a guy who did a bunch of market research for a senior care product. They found technology use, on average, dips in the 60s and then starts increasing again in the seventies.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#228

Post by felideon »

agavin wrote: post #208

For nearly two decades I was a diehard LISP advocate. I even forced all my programers to code three Crash Bandicoot and four Jak & Daxter games in custom LISP dialects that I wrote the compilers for (an article on one here http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/03/12/making-crash-ban... ). But by the mid 2000s I started doing the kind of programming I used to do in LISP in Ruby. It's not that Ruby is a better language…

“And it’s type system and object model are better than CL anyway. ”

Would be nice if you could expand on this, as it surprises me that an [ex-]Lisper would not prefer CLOS above all! :)

Also, we call it Lisp nowadays.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#229

Post by TedSelker »

He was deeply excited about the neutrino experiments reported in the last month and following it and other such news till the end.

His daughter told me actually died while in the bathroom sitting on the pot.

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