Hacker News Reader

Bullshit (to the claim that Turing was virtual unknown). I had no idea Turing was gay when the man became synonymous to Finite State Machines and was one of the household names in all low-level/hardware related subjects and most computing/algorythm related ones in my software engineering uni program.

View on HN

If you were in a software engineering uni program, then you were around well after the timescale the OP is talking about, I believe; I think their claim is more to the often-promulgated idea that Turing was a major figure in the development of electronic computers as we know them who ought be heralded as "The Father of Computers", as he is now often portrayed in pop science.

My objections were to his idea that Turing was virtual unknown who somehow got recognition because he was gay. I was in SE uni program in the 90s, but "Turing-complete", "Turing test" and FSMs with references to him were there in theory textbooks written in the socialist 80s. For example, a friend's mom was a professor in medical school of my university, and a textbook from the same era in his house was pretty darn assured that homosexuality is a mental illness that needs to be treated in a mental institution together with alcoholism and drug additcion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com