Stats for nerds
1recommend
23mentions
22people
2010–2026years
4% recommend96% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- 'Passages from the life of a Philosopher' was a very insightful read. We were this close to becoming a steampunk society! Here's the Difference Engine implemented in Clojure[0] and Pythton[1].
- > To those who are acquainted with the principles of the Jacquard loom, and who are also familiar with analytical formulæ, a general idea of the means by which the Engine executes its operations may be obtained without much difficulty. In the Exhibition of 1862 there were many splendid examples of such looms. It is known as a fact that the Jacquard loom is capable of {117} weaving any design which the imagination of man may conceive. It is also the constant practice for skilled artists to be employed by manufacturers in designing patterns. These patterns are then sent to a peculiar artist, who, by means of a certain machine, punches holes in a set of pasteboard cards in such a manner that when those cards are placed in a Jacquard loom, it will then weave upon its produce the exact pattern designed by the artist. 〈WEAVING FORMULÆ.〉 Now the manufacturer may use, for the warp and weft of his work, threads which are all of the same colour; let us suppose them to be unbleached or white threads. In this case the cloth will be woven all of one colour; but there will be a damask pattern upon it such as the artist designed. But the manufacturer might use the same cards, and put into the warp threads of any other colour. Every thread might even be of a different colour, or of a different shade of colour; but in all these cases the form of the pattern will be precisely the same—the colours only will differ. The analogy of the Analytical Engine with this well-known process is nearly perfect. The Analytical Engine consists of two parts:— 1st. The store in which all the variables to be operated upon, as well as all those quantities which have arisen from the result of other operations, are placed. 2nd. The mill into which the quantities about to be operated upon are always brought.
- Charles Babbage, Passages from the life of a philosopher.
- Mid 1800s computing classic.
> On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
From Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864), ch. 5 "Difference Engine No. 1"
- I just did. Found a copy of Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864), read ch. 5 "Difference Engine No. 1". Not a single mention of "thinking machine" and overall just a guy describing the ideation of a mechanical calculator.
I have no idea what you are going on about.
- > It's impossible to do graphics in pure C, so what are the alternatives
Plenty of other comments have already disputed this. It's a reasonable mistake to make, especially if your experience is with more recent technologies and languages.
All the same if reminds me of this perennial quote from a man who really couldn't just use C for everything;
> On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
- Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864), ch. 5 "Difference Engine No. 1"
Although I don't start new projects in C very often, I'm acutely aware how it's not turtles all the way down (as the logophiles believe), but rather C. With some infrequent exceptions the whole tower of abstraction was written in C. SDL is written in C, the compiler? C, the Linux kernel is written in C, the graphics driver was written in C, the GPU firmware was C. It might be unfeasible for you to get by without writing these yourself, but with enough C and somewhere to sit you can move the earth.
(Of course all projects have a smattering of other languages and with great effort you can bootstrap from Forth or handwrite assembly or whatever, but you can do it all in C, and very likely that's what happened.)
- That made me think of a quote from Charles Babbage, arguably the inventor of the mechanical computer. I wonder if it was added intentionally as a reference:
> On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
– Charles Babbage in Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)
Related
A Guide to the Good Life
135 recommend · 197
Meditations
107 recommend · 237
Philosophy as a way of life
6 recommend · 7
Philosophical investigations
42 recommend · 154
The Consolation of Philosophy
6 recommend · 18
Philosophy between the lines
5 recommend · 9
Discourses
recommend · 34