We now know that electronic technology has no more to contribute to computing than the physical equipment. We now know that programmable computer is no more and no less than an extremely handy device…

… as long as computing science is not allowed to save the computer industry, we had better see to it that the computer industry does not kill computing science. EWD #1248…

There were 56 participants and, as a result of the subject, there was a relatively heavy representation of what pushes itself as “theoretical computing science” which, I am afraid, is just a euphemism…

LISP is a good example. In the early sixties we have suffered from a piece of computer science folklore, viz. that the crucial test whether on had designed “a good language” was, whether one could wri…

The more I hear about Artificial Intelligence the more ridiculous becomes its often heard defense that Artificial Intelligence has contributed so much to programming technology –for both, the claim an…

this confirmed all my prejudices against pictures. EWD #798   (lol!)…

LISP’s syntax is so atrocious that I never understood its popularity. LISP’s possibility to introduce higher-order functions was mentioned several times in its defence, but now I come to think of it,…

… our only hope is that, by revealing the intellectual contents of programming, we will make the subject attracting the type of students it deserves, so that a next generation of better qualified prog…

Type-checking is really where the trench is dug between Lisp and ML. The prescence of type-checking in ML (and its absence even in recent implementations of Lisp) is reflective of two competing philos…

People use C because it /feels/ faster.  Like, if you build a catapult strong enough that it can hurl a bathtub with someone crouching inside it from London to New York, it will feel /very/ fast both…

The informational big bang. http://www.ymeme.com/kent-m-pitman-answers-lisp-much-more-part-2.html…

The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of th…