Prev: Omega Constellation Mens Watch 1512.30
Next: Of Wacom tablets, terminals, serial ports, and adapters
From: Tom Harrington on 25 Apr 2010 16:50
In article
<siegman-F1075E.19523924042010(a)bmedcfsc-srv02.tufts.ad.tufts.edu>,
AES <siegman(a)stanford.edu> wrote:

> In article
> <2fec8c3d-da4a-4464-bb36-8f2af3414fad(a)h16g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
> The Translucent Amoebae <transamoebae(a)seanet.com> wrote:
>
> > i was then wondering - Who are the best programmers...?
> > In the early days of programming, many very hard & counter-intuitive
> > problems were solved by some very clever programmers and programming
> > routines, routines which are now ubiquitous in nearly all
> > applications.
>
> Don Knuth? (even if he might be more commonly labelled as "computer
> scientist" rather than "programmer")

Definitely Knuth. However you want to label him, you can't really
overstate his effect on modern computer science. I'd also add Alan
Turing, who probably influenced and developed the field more than anyone
(it's not for nothing that the ACM named the Turing award after him).

Also, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, and Ken Thompson, for many things
but in this newsgroup perhaps most significantly for their work on Unix
and C. And of course Alan Kay for early work on graphical user
interfaces.

Just off the top of my head, of course. Really anyone who's won the
Turing award qualifies in one way or another--
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award>.

--
Tom "Tom" Harrington
Independent Mac OS X developer since 2002
http://www.atomicbird.com/
From: Steve Hix on 25 Apr 2010 17:48
In article <hr242k$h4c$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>,
Phillip Jones <pjones1(a)kimbanet.com> wrote:
> >
> Certainly not Gates. his claim to fame is buying software for pennies on
> the Dollar (using carrot and Stick Techniques, the repackaging as his
> own. He originally was friends with the two Steve's and when he was
> rebuffed when asked them to join them in Start up Apple; he created MS
> get them, as revenge.

Neat trick, that, since MS was founded (April 4, 1975) before Apple
(April 1, 1976 and incorporated January 3, 1977).

Where *do* people get these tales?

> The reason why they rebuffed him, he was not
> smarter enough, so far as computer science goes.

Which explains why people like Mike Markkula, who didn't contribute any
particular technical expertise to the company, were so important in its
early days.
From: Paul Sture on 26 Apr 2010 08:46
In article <timstreater-31A194.16111625042010(a)news.individual.net>,
Tim Streater <timstreater(a)waitrose.com> wrote:

> Toggled it in? That's for softies. Had he been a proper programmer, he'd
> have used a bar magnet and magifying glass, and coded the bits directly
> onto the disk.

The Story of Mel:

<http://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html>

--
Paul Sture
From: Robert Haar on 26 Apr 2010 16:50
On 4/25/10 11:11 AM, "Tim Streater" <timstreater(a)waitrose.com> wrote:

> In article <38adnUdmz_mSLE7WnZ2dnUVZ_o6dnZ2d(a)speakeasy.net>,
>> Maybe not Gates, but the story goes that Paul Allen wrote a tape loader in
>> 8080 assembler while on a plane, toggled it by hand into a computer
>> the next day, and it worked the first time (some versions of the story
>> have it working after fixing one error). If true, that gets him a nomination
>> in my book.
>
> Toggled it in? That's for softies. Had he been a proper programmer, he'd
> have used a bar magnet and magifying glass, and coded the bits directly
> onto the disk.

Nah - this goes back to days of paper tape, long before magnetic disk
storage was available.

I remember editing paper tape by gluing punches back into the holes and
punching new ones. But this was mylar tape, not paper.


From: Tom Harrington on 26 Apr 2010 18:47
In article <hr4tjv$6e3$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>,
Phillip Jones <pjones1(a)kimbanet.com> wrote:

> I don't know whether it it is still in the Principal's Office. But when
> I worked for a school system there was a very tall wall Clock that used
> a Paper Tape It was functioning at the time as Clock. I think it at one
> time run the bells. But it was an endless lop punched paper tape about
> 6 inches wide.

Sounds like a prime target for student pranks.

--
Tom "Tom" Harrington
Independent Mac OS X developer since 2002
http://www.atomicbird.com/
First  |  Prev  |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5
Prev: Omega Constellation Mens Watch 1512.30
Next: Of Wacom tablets, terminals, serial ports, and adapters