1. Knuth laments the lack of technical ("internal") history of computing, which traces the evolution of technology and ideas, and should be of great interest and benefit to practitioners.
2. Historians typically focus on their domains of expertise - social history, culture, economics, politics, personalities, etc. - and tend to write non-technical ("external") history of computing.
3. The people who have the relevant technical expertise - practioners, researchers, and scholars within the computing field - are qualified (in terms of technical understanding at least) to write this technical history, but have basically zero economic incentive to do so. There is no reward for industry practitioners to write the technical history of computing, and there is little to no reward for computing researchers or scholars either. And of course if one is (or becomes) an expert in computing, there is no economic incentive to become (or remain) a historian.
4. Nonetheless, there is in fact a small (and hopefully growing) group of scholars who seem to be interested in investigating the technical history of computing (and according to the author "holistic" history which includes multiple aspects.)
I tend to agree with Knuth - technical history is extremely valuable to both practitioners and researchers in computing, and there isn't enough of it.
While it is understandable that computing practitioners and researchers want to look forward to the next "new" thing rather than backward to "old" things, ignoring computing history means that we are often reinventing the wheel, repeating old mistakes, etc., all while lacking an understanding of how and why things are the way they are today. And perhaps missing out on a great deal of fun and intellectual engagement as well.
Fortunately is some activity in terms of writing up and analyzing the technical history of computing, and I certainly appreciate the work of the CHM, journals like Annals of the History of Computing, the work of retrocomputing hobbyists, and the work of the scholars mentioned in the article. But (as the article notes) there are few economic and career incentives - in history or in computing - to produce this important work.
The article validates Knuth with these statements:
> For different reasons, outlined below, neither group has shown much interest in supporting work of the kind favored by Knuth. That is why it has rarely been written.
> Most of this new work is aimed primarily at historians, philosophers, or science studies specialists rather than computer scientists
> Work of the particular kind preferred by Knuth will flourish only if his colleagues in computer science are willing to produce, reward, or commission it.
The second part of this last sentence isn't wrong, but sidesteps the first point. One might similarly criticize history departments for failing to reward or commission technological literacy.
I also agree with Knuth and for me it has been extremely valuable to know the history of various technologies, and especially knowing the reasons why the optimum solutions have been replaced from time to time and the causal connections between various discoveries.
I see expressed frequently opinions that old scientific and technical publications are obsolete, but in my opinion this is very naive.
The optimum technology or algorithm for solving a certain problem changes when improvements are done in some different domains. However the range of kinds of solutions for a given problem is usually finite, so when the optimum solution changes in time it may necessarily change to a kind of solution that has already been used in the past.
Because of this, it is very frequent to see claims about the discovery of "new" things, where the so-called "new" things were well known and widely used some decades ago, or even much earlier.
The worst is not the time wasted with the rediscovery of old things, but the fact that the rediscoveries are usually incomplete, without also rediscovering the finer points about which are their most efficient variants and which are their limitations, which may make them non-applicable in certain contexts.
Knowing a detailed technical and scientific history avoids such cases.
A PhD caliber thesis with devastating epistenics about failures that have claimed conservatively a dozen lives is going gray on an 18 year old account but this shit is fine.
@dang, I'm now threatening to buy a massive oppo campaign with immaculate data and OpenAI's fundraise hanging by a thread.
Dan's offline now. I'm the other moderator here. We can't allow commenting like this to continue without taking any action. It has nothing to do with the targets of your attacks, and everything to do with keeping HN healthy. HN is not the venue for campaigns against specific individuals or organizations. The people you're referring to are not on HN, and haven't been for a long time. The people here are Dan and I and ordinary HN users. These ongoing outbursts have no effect on the companies and people you're talking about, and serve only to make HN worse for the people who are here. You're welcome to take whatever action you’re legally able to against the people and companies you've mentioned. But we can't have you continually venting this stuff in unrelated HN threads.
Be precise about the harm done to the community, which I've been part of for longer than it's newer members have been alive. A community in which my accurate forecasting of "risk of ruin" type outcomes has error bars between 60-90%.
Be precise about what a healthy HN means, because that's not written down anywhere, the guidelines such as they are? A masterclass in selective enforcement of blank-check norms for money.
You've got the same dataset I do, and exactly the same access to legitimate authority as opposed to self-arrogated police powers on behalf of public benefit corporations which have neither benefited the public nor a shareholder.
I was here long before you or Dan, and if you ban me, it will be the wedge I need to move this conversation somewhere else.
Let's dance.
edit:
and one more thing, quote a primary source once in a while.
i have better citations ranting than you do larping adult:
If you read this and mount a credible objection that can't be addressed by tweaks to methodology, then I will leave the site forever.
But the asymmetry of the power of selective participation is tyrannical: you engage when you like, your silence is a moral victory by default, and I'm the senior community member by a lot.
Engage constructively, substantial ly, and in public, or deal with my press releases.
The data shows black holes in comments and submissions that correlate with Altman. I ran it on myself to not fix anyone. There are other search parameters that are worse, it's open source, proven in lean4 to a growing degree, and you win by making an argument, not being an unclected apparatchik.
Ok, this is not good for anyone, so I've banned the account until we have some reason to believe that things have stabilized.
I know it may be hard to believe right now, but we appreciate you and your contributions. We can't have users going on tilt on Hacker News though. As I said, experience has taught us that it's not good for anyone.
I made a full pass but was annoyed with the author's contention that "History of History of Software" (WTF does this even mean?) should be treated as seriously as "Computer Science" itself. While there is some logic in saying "Computing" involves "Computer Science + all its various usages in various domains" focusing on the latter (ancillary) and not the former (primary) is certainly "dumbing down" as Knuth correctly takes issue. A good parallel would be a "Scientific Theory" and its "various realizations in various domains".
This, for me, was the final validation that this article is not to be taken seriously;
In his paper, Campbell-Kelly offered a “biographical mea culpa” for his own early work that he now reads with a “mild flush of embarrassment.” He came to see his erstwhile enthusiasm for technical history as a youthful indiscretion and his conversion to business history as an act of redemption,
Here is my TL;DR and interpretation:
1. Knuth laments the lack of technical ("internal") history of computing, which traces the evolution of technology and ideas, and should be of great interest and benefit to practitioners.
2. Historians typically focus on their domains of expertise - social history, culture, economics, politics, personalities, etc. - and tend to write non-technical ("external") history of computing.
3. The people who have the relevant technical expertise - practioners, researchers, and scholars within the computing field - are qualified (in terms of technical understanding at least) to write this technical history, but have basically zero economic incentive to do so. There is no reward for industry practitioners to write the technical history of computing, and there is little to no reward for computing researchers or scholars either. And of course if one is (or becomes) an expert in computing, there is no economic incentive to become (or remain) a historian.
4. Nonetheless, there is in fact a small (and hopefully growing) group of scholars who seem to be interested in investigating the technical history of computing (and according to the author "holistic" history which includes multiple aspects.)
I tend to agree with Knuth - technical history is extremely valuable to both practitioners and researchers in computing, and there isn't enough of it.
While it is understandable that computing practitioners and researchers want to look forward to the next "new" thing rather than backward to "old" things, ignoring computing history means that we are often reinventing the wheel, repeating old mistakes, etc., all while lacking an understanding of how and why things are the way they are today. And perhaps missing out on a great deal of fun and intellectual engagement as well.
Fortunately is some activity in terms of writing up and analyzing the technical history of computing, and I certainly appreciate the work of the CHM, journals like Annals of the History of Computing, the work of retrocomputing hobbyists, and the work of the scholars mentioned in the article. But (as the article notes) there are few economic and career incentives - in history or in computing - to produce this important work.
The article validates Knuth with these statements:
> For different reasons, outlined below, neither group has shown much interest in supporting work of the kind favored by Knuth. That is why it has rarely been written.
> Most of this new work is aimed primarily at historians, philosophers, or science studies specialists rather than computer scientists
> Work of the particular kind preferred by Knuth will flourish only if his colleagues in computer science are willing to produce, reward, or commission it.
The second part of this last sentence isn't wrong, but sidesteps the first point. One might similarly criticize history departments for failing to reward or commission technological literacy.
I also agree with Knuth and for me it has been extremely valuable to know the history of various technologies, and especially knowing the reasons why the optimum solutions have been replaced from time to time and the causal connections between various discoveries.
I see expressed frequently opinions that old scientific and technical publications are obsolete, but in my opinion this is very naive.
The optimum technology or algorithm for solving a certain problem changes when improvements are done in some different domains. However the range of kinds of solutions for a given problem is usually finite, so when the optimum solution changes in time it may necessarily change to a kind of solution that has already been used in the past.
Because of this, it is very frequent to see claims about the discovery of "new" things, where the so-called "new" things were well known and widely used some decades ago, or even much earlier.
The worst is not the time wasted with the rediscovery of old things, but the fact that the rediscoveries are usually incomplete, without also rediscovering the finer points about which are their most efficient variants and which are their limitations, which may make them non-applicable in certain contexts.
Knowing a detailed technical and scientific history avoids such cases.
*practitioners - too late to fix typo
Same reaction. I can't even say the author is correct/wrong because I couldn't get through it.
[flagged]
[flagged]
A PhD caliber thesis with devastating epistenics about failures that have claimed conservatively a dozen lives is going gray on an 18 year old account but this shit is fine.
@dang, I'm now threatening to buy a massive oppo campaign with immaculate data and OpenAI's fundraise hanging by a thread.
Fix it or I'll fix it.
[flagged]
Would you please stop posting like this?
No, I will continue to raise the alarm bells until YC affiliated companies and executives stop getting sued for manslaughter or it's moral equivalent.
Profanity is not ugly, ugly is ugly and you back Insta cart slave labor practices with bipartisan objections of disgust.
Dan's offline now. I'm the other moderator here. We can't allow commenting like this to continue without taking any action. It has nothing to do with the targets of your attacks, and everything to do with keeping HN healthy. HN is not the venue for campaigns against specific individuals or organizations. The people you're referring to are not on HN, and haven't been for a long time. The people here are Dan and I and ordinary HN users. These ongoing outbursts have no effect on the companies and people you're talking about, and serve only to make HN worse for the people who are here. You're welcome to take whatever action you’re legally able to against the people and companies you've mentioned. But we can't have you continually venting this stuff in unrelated HN threads.
Be precise in such serious accusations.
Be precise about the harm done to the community, which I've been part of for longer than it's newer members have been alive. A community in which my accurate forecasting of "risk of ruin" type outcomes has error bars between 60-90%.
Be precise about what a healthy HN means, because that's not written down anywhere, the guidelines such as they are? A masterclass in selective enforcement of blank-check norms for money.
You've got the same dataset I do, and exactly the same access to legitimate authority as opposed to self-arrogated police powers on behalf of public benefit corporations which have neither benefited the public nor a shareholder.
I was here long before you or Dan, and if you ban me, it will be the wedge I need to move this conversation somewhere else.
Let's dance.
edit:
and one more thing, quote a primary source once in a while.
i have better citations ranting than you do larping adult:
https://www.wired.com/story/instacart-delivery-workers-still...
[dead]
[dead]
If you read this and mount a credible objection that can't be addressed by tweaks to methodology, then I will leave the site forever.
But the asymmetry of the power of selective participation is tyrannical: you engage when you like, your silence is a moral victory by default, and I'm the senior community member by a lot.
https://github.com/b7r6/cassandra-dissertation
6 kids dead, not counting Suchir.
Engage constructively, substantial ly, and in public, or deal with my press releases.
The data shows black holes in comments and submissions that correlate with Altman. I ran it on myself to not fix anyone. There are other search parameters that are worse, it's open source, proven in lean4 to a growing degree, and you win by making an argument, not being an unclected apparatchik.
This time silence looks guilty, because this time I brought the corpus and the math.
The burden is on you now to show you're not a parrot for goons.
Ok, this is not good for anyone, so I've banned the account until we have some reason to believe that things have stabilized.
I know it may be hard to believe right now, but we appreciate you and your contributions. We can't have users going on tilt on Hacker News though. As I said, experience has taught us that it's not good for anyone.
It's good to see just how far we can push the mods here until we finally face consequences!
Thank you for keeping this place healthy day after day after day.
Yep, a very badly written article.
I made a full pass but was annoyed with the author's contention that "History of History of Software" (WTF does this even mean?) should be treated as seriously as "Computer Science" itself. While there is some logic in saying "Computing" involves "Computer Science + all its various usages in various domains" focusing on the latter (ancillary) and not the former (primary) is certainly "dumbing down" as Knuth correctly takes issue. A good parallel would be a "Scientific Theory" and its "various realizations in various domains".
This, for me, was the final validation that this article is not to be taken seriously;
In his paper, Campbell-Kelly offered a “biographical mea culpa” for his own early work that he now reads with a “mild flush of embarrassment.” He came to see his erstwhile enthusiasm for technical history as a youthful indiscretion and his conversion to business history as an act of redemption,
[flagged]