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A brief history of computers

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Re: A brief history of computers

#61

Post by javajosh »

coldtea wrote: post #55
javajosh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And actually Boole is only dealing with two distinguishable states. Any two distinguishable physical states can be used to define binary 1 and 0. But in general, any N distinguishable states can be used to form an algebra. N=2 is just the simplest, most elegant, and what most real computers are based on. I've heard rumors that an N=3 computer exists, aka 'ternary' (EDITed) but I have my doubts. On the math side you c…

> I've heard rumors that an N=3 computer exists, aka 'ternary' (EDITed) but I have my doubts Rumours? This is the internet. Rumour to research is a few clicks away. They did exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun

[flagged]

Re: A brief history of computers

#63

Post by nappy »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #57
nappy wrote: post #25

I don't recommend reading this. There are many gaps and a lot of important history missing, including: 1. Computation before ~1800. Abacus, Napier's Bones, Slides rules, Pascal's Calculator, motivations from celestial navigation and astronomy. 2. Modern analog computers ~1900-1950. The author seems to refer to them as "math machines" and leaves it at that, without exploring much deeper than that they were used for be…

> [In the 1980s] Microprocessors started to replace integrated circuits. Author implies (in the quote above which occurs after the discussion of the invention of personal computers) that the early personal computers from the 1970s did not use microprocessors. This of course is false: All the early "personal computers" used microprocessors. For example the IMSAI used an 8080, the Apple II used a 6502, and the TRS-80 u…

There is a lot that is wrong in this article. Broad overviews are useful to people new to a topic - this would only mislead and confuse people.

Re: A brief history of computers

#64

Post by earthboundkid »

peter303 wrote: post #51
Sharlin wrote: post #30

Boole didn’t introduce propositional logic; what he did was come up with an algebra that encodes propositional logic. Abstract algebra was a new snd developing thing back then, the idea that you can generalize from numbers and addition and multiplication to other structures that have something like numbers and addition and multiplication. Boole found that if you take the two-element set {0, 1} and choose saturating a…

Aristotle described propositional logic.

No. He described term logic.

Re: A brief history of computers

#65

Post by Sniffnoy »

Sharlin wrote: post #30

Boole didn’t introduce propositional logic; what he did was come up with an algebra that encodes propositional logic. Abstract algebra was a new snd developing thing back then, the idea that you can generalize from numbers and addition and multiplication to other structures that have something like numbers and addition and multiplication. Boole found that if you take the two-element set {0, 1} and choose saturating a…

Note: That's not actually a ring. If you use XOR as addition as it's a ring. You could say it's a semiring, but that's probably not the most useful description of it. A more-fitting structure would be an appropriate sort of distributive lattice. Or really... a Boolean algebra! Except I also have to point out that you only included AND and OR; you left out NOT, which is also an important part of the structure.

Re: A brief history of computers

#66

Post by Sharlin »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #65
Sharlin wrote: post #30

Boole didn’t introduce propositional logic; what he did was come up with an algebra that encodes propositional logic. Abstract algebra was a new snd developing thing back then, the idea that you can generalize from numbers and addition and multiplication to other structures that have something like numbers and addition and multiplication. Boole found that if you take the two-element set {0, 1} and choose saturating a…

Note: That's not actually a ring. If you use XOR as addition as it's a ring. You could say it's a semiring, but that's probably not the most useful description of it. A more-fitting structure would be an appropriate sort of distributive lattice. Or really... a Boolean algebra! Except I also have to point out that you only included AND and OR; you left out NOT, which is also an important part of the structure.

Yes, good points!

Re: A brief history of computers

#67

Post by Tuna-Fish »

nappy wrote: post #25

I don't recommend reading this. There are many gaps and a lot of important history missing, including: 1. Computation before ~1800. Abacus, Napier's Bones, Slides rules, Pascal's Calculator, motivations from celestial navigation and astronomy. 2. Modern analog computers ~1900-1950. The author seems to refer to them as "math machines" and leaves it at that, without exploring much deeper than that they were used for be…

> It was certainly a breakthrough, but the idea that computers immediately became quieter, cheaper, and more reliable is false. They were much larger, initially, compared to analog computers of the era. By almost any measure, they were also much less efficient with energy, though this may depend on what sort of calculations you are doing - I'm less sure of this.

Not only against the analog computers of the era. Early vacuum tube computers were significantly less reliable and less energy-efficient than electromechanical digital computers, like the Harward Mark 1.

Re: A brief history of computers

#68

Post by ddingus »

coldtea wrote: post #54
MostlyStable wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird to me that you are conflating asking GPT a question related to your article and writing your article. Would you have a similar reaction if he had said "according to google"? There does not seem to be any evidence at all that the author didn't write this entire article, and the fact that they explicitly reference that they consulted GPT on some related point seems further evidence that they _didn't_ have GP…

> It's weird to me that you are conflating asking GPT a question related to your article and writing your article. Would you have a similar reaction if he had said "according to google"? Yes. Though at least with Google, the author still gets a chance to somewhat evaluate the links they are given.

Seems to me the author can evaluate the information given by GBT too.

It's not like a one shot affair, and I feel that assumption is more common than would be generally useful.

Consider (from my own use of GBT):

Author queries Google, follows a few links, realizes they really need to take a step back and make new queries.

Author queries ChatGPT and essentially short cuts past that initial Google learning step I just mentioned above and follows with a combination of chats and Google searches.

End result is author ends up with a rough understanding and a set of information they can draw from and potentially continue to explore, depending on their needs.

There is also running queries on say, Yandex, Google, DuckDuck to see what each returns. I do that frequently.

ChatGPT mostly makes me a lot more productive. One can jump past that initial set of queries often necessary when jumping into unfamiliar territory.

Evaluating ChatGPT info works the same as using search does! Like doing multiple searches with various terms, exclusions, quotes and such, using multiple prompts can be powerful.

As others have said, the only real issue is trust.

Did the author realize something to the degree needed to speak competently, or just take what they were given and run with it?

These things being used like tools is no big deal. Like any good tool, there comes an obligation to use them correctly and with integrity.

Re: A brief history of computers

#69

Post by adamzerner »

Sharlin wrote: post #30

Boole didn’t introduce propositional logic; what he did was come up with an algebra that encodes propositional logic. Abstract algebra was a new snd developing thing back then, the idea that you can generalize from numbers and addition and multiplication to other structures that have something like numbers and addition and multiplication. Boole found that if you take the two-element set {0, 1} and choose saturating a…

Interesting. Thanks for the comment.

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble understanding though. The furthest I got with math is calculus. I'd love to hear a more ELI5 description of what you said. Something that doesn't require prior knowledge of abstract algebra. (I recognize that's a big/difficult ask. No obligation or anything ofc.)

Re: A brief history of computers

#70

Post by FullyFunctional »

Funny piece, but some parts are terribly uninformed of the actual history. This part irks me greatly:

> "Why is it so helpful to have the data and instructions share the same memory? Well, for starters, it's simpler, cheaper, and it made execution faster because stuff is all closer together. It was also convenient to access stuff in a single address space rather than having separate schemes."

Why are ALL µprocessors today then using separate instruction and data cache? For early pre-"von-Neumann" computers, memory was an extremely precious resource and you wouldn't waste it some something as frivolous as almost-completely static code. Only once memory became large/cheap enough did the (not-so-surprising) idea of stored-program become practical. The benefits were many: self-modifying code (for good reasons very popular in those days, even much younger PDP-8 can't be used without it), moving more complexity of IO and bootstrapping into code, and eventually, code to make code.

Another point that is glossed over is that none of these technology changes were a slam dunk. For example, in the early days, transistors were FAR from the 1000X faster claim; they were limited, unreliable, and expensive and not all in the industry believe they would ever take over "proven technology like radio tubes". Same, it actually took a good while before silicon memory replaced core-memory. A more recent example: CMOS was originally the slow technology, only suitable for watches and cheap calculators.

Source: countless books on the early history of Z1-3, ENIAC, Cray, Intel, etc.

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