Hacker News Reader

Comment by alharith | Hacker News Reader

Alright, someone tell me what are some must downloads? I've been out of college for a while so haven't kept up.

edit: I am most interested in models of computing, and more recently ML-family of languages, and the theories behind it. I am also generally interested in those papers that people view as "classics" or serve as computing history. Hoares CSP, or most anything by Dijkstra that may not be public already.

View on HN

A list from 10 years ago, https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9220o/ask_prog...

HOPL (History of Programming Languages) conference notes. I can't confirm that they're on there yet but they're riveting.

ETA: They are!

https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/800025

https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/154766

https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/1238844

The transcripts of the question and answer sessions are excellent. Thank you!

I don't see anything for III

Start here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1238844.1411838

And hit the 'next' button to get at the subsequent papers.

Couldn't find an index.

I'll dig it up

What are you interested in? The recommendations I can make for someone fascinated with LISP are different than the ones I can make for someone interested in computing history are different than the ones I can make for someone interested in processor design and so on. There's a very wide selection here.

Given your submissions to HN I'd say just go with whatever you're interested in, it's bound to be good. ;-)

As for myself, anything in re: compiling functional and/or stack-based languages; and DSLs for GUIs.

Cheers!

APL compilation and interpretation by translating to F83VEC; Naugle

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/22415.22032

Here's a double-hitter: compiling a functional language (APL) to a stack-based language (FORTH).

awesome

- - - -

I found a couple of interesting tidbits:

Computer programming as an art, Donald E. Knuth https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/361604.361612

Prolog - the language and its implementation compared with Lisp, David H D Warren, Luis M Pereira, Fernando C. N. Pereira https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/872734.806939

I'm interested in well written CS papers that have immediate practical value for a generalist backend software engineer.

Hi, I would like to hear more :)

This may not be what you want to hear, but for both of you:

APL Programming: A Psychological Model; R. Hooker

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800058.801100

I'm not the GP but I'd be super interested in any computing history recommendations.

There was a decent response from someone else elsewhere in this thread that I'd recommend.

I'll take the "fascinated with LISP" ones :)

This should get you started; just some links I had laying around:

Connection Machine Lisp: fine-grained parallel symbolic processing; Steele, Hillis

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/319838.319870

I'm biased because this one is effectively "What if we make an APL Lisp?"

Design of a LISP-based microprocessor; Steele, Sussman

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/359024.359031

This one is one of the hundreds that came out of the Mead/Conway book. Basically, it's a LISP-based VLSI chip.

Turtles and defense; Sobalvarro, Klotz

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1056602.1056608

As 'donhopkins put it:

It was Leigh Klotz's sarcastic response to a Defense Department questionnaire to Terrapin about how their technology could be used to kill people.

He proposed deploying a swarm of thousands of LOGO turtles to crawl around the battlefield in mesmerizing geometric patterns, and stab the enemy with a quick succession of PENUP and PENDOWN commands (proving once again that the pen is mightier than the sword).

(For more information:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... )

> I'm biased because this one is effectively "What if we make an APL Lisp?"

You might like this excerpt from the MIT Dynamic Languages Wizard's panel, where Guy Steele said [1]:

> Higher order functionals, I think, are underrated, and can be very good. As the years pass, the more I use Common Lisp, the more I find myself using the sequence functions, including a lot of mapcars. I had to do a matrix tensor product routine about two weeks ago, and I was puzzling over how to do the nested do loops and so forth, and finally I realized it was just mapcar of mapcar of apply of append to mapcar and mapcar, done. No big deal. In other words, thinking in APL should improve your Lisp code.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agw-wlHGi0E&feature=youtu.be...

Steele has many comments I love in regards to APL! Unlike many, he still sees it as a great path. He's a fantastic example of someone who's competent enough that they have no reason to slander other languages.

I strongly recommend the first paper. I am still trying to realize something like it. I often wonder what Hillis and Steele would say about the topic..and whether they abandoned the idea because it wasn't tactically effective or whether it was just intractable.

really glad to see it mentioned...too much great thought gets lost

(scheme on silicon is up there too)

> I often wonder what Hillis and Steele would say about the topic..and whether they abandoned the idea because it wasn't tactically effective or whether it was just intractable.

You should email them and report back.

What are you interested in? If you like Ruby I maintain a list at https://rubybib.org/, and many of the ones with a paywall tag are now freely available and weren't before.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com