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Comment by rian | Hacker News Reader

Article/media is a bit sensationalistic in describing this as an early computer. The programming language (a list of letters) doesn't support arbitrary logic, branching and doesn't have a notion of memory. In that way, it's like an intricate player piano or HTML. Still a marvel of mechanical engineering but conceptually far from what we consider a computer today.

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I logged in to say this exact thing. This is not a programmable computer any more than a printing press was a programmable computer.

This is an EXTREMELY clever and complicated printer.

A printer IS a computer. The fact that it translates a language (the "bumps" on the cams) into action is the computational part.

I think this comes down to, does a device need to be Turing complete to be considered a computer? If not, then what level of complications is needed for it to be a computer? For example is a watch, or a record player, a computer?

Computer: an electronic device which is capable of receiving information (data) in a particular form and of performing a sequence of operations in accordance with a predetermined but variable set of procedural instructions (program) to produce a result in the form of information or signals.

I disagree with the "electronic" part. That disqualifies Charles Babbage's early mechanical computers, not to mention all of biological/chemical computing.

And the electro-mechanical computers of the 40s and 50s.

How do you separate the data from the instructions in this case? I'd say it's the same thing. You can change the word, but not how a word is translated into hand movements without rebuilding the whole thing (please don't!). Isn't the word configuration more like input, than a program?

On the other hand, this definition is very vague...

A Turing machine is a subset of computers.

http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=computer&allowed_in_fra...

The level of complication necessary is "can compute stuff". Whether you want to include any kind of functional transformation as a computation or not is up to you.

I don't know that it needs to be Turing complete, but I'm inclined to say that it should have at least some control operations to qualify as a computer.

Example: Consider a hypothetical machine that implements standard SQL in hardware. Such a device would not be Turing-complete. Would you still call it a computer? I would.

IMHO as long as it has states, and it actually accepts some input while rejecting others, it is a computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_computation

EDIT: Thus a printer IS a computer, not for the procedural operations, but for that you can feed in some illegal input through the interface(no matter serial, peripheral or USB), and it will either send you back some complaint, or disconnect from you, or burn itself down.

But can you feed this pinoccoscribe illegal input?

Probably not, since the correct response to illegal input is to never arrive at a halting state, and putting aside mechanical considerations, it doesn't seem like the boy is supposed to loop over anything in such a way that would allow it (in intention, not in practice) never to halt.

Not 'but' but 'and' right?

It's a bit oversimplistic to equate this with movable type. It's also sensationalist to describe it as an early computer, of course. But I'd be perfectly happy with characterizing it as a very early precursor to the computer.

It's common to trace the lineage of modern computers back through the Analytical Engine and the Difference engine to the Jacquard loom. And what the Jacquard loom is, is an apparatus which takes input in the form of a digital code and performs a distinct action for each possible value in the input. The Writer is also an apparatus which takes input in the form of a digital code and performs a distinct action for each possible value in the input.

The key difference is that the Jacquard loom's input is composite: It's a series of bits, each of which indicates whether a corresponding harness should be raised or lowered. That's enough of an incremental difference that I think it'd be totally fair to treat The Writer as another step back in the modern computer's lineage.

It would be fun to create a loom that could weave holes, and then feed its output into it as input.

A knitted quine?

This is more of a computer than movable type is, but it's not more programmable.

Well, no I think you're just wrong. Most academics would think of this as an early proto computer or programmable device. It is an automata. Just because there isn't a YouTube vid go some hipster showing you how to make a blog engine with it just change that.

But I guess we can play the Sarah Palin game blaming the "media." :)

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