Six works of Computer Science-Fiction (2015)

Art of the propagator It is like a discovering a new programming paradigm. Something new and different, not a Lisp, not a Datalog, weirdly distributed, with interesting properties, but powerful. There are adjacent things, BLOOM project and Eve language seems to have discovered something simmilar, and Edward Kmett working on his new language is using propagators quite heavily. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/755c/48fd10aa303497ef849977... Sci-fy to go with it: probably Ted Chiangs Stories of your Life (or its…

The architecture manual for the Intel iAPX 432 processor reads like alternate-world science fiction. [1] This processor came out in 1981 and was supposed to be the revolutionary new thing in computers. It failed and was mostly forgotten, but the world would be very different if it had replaced x86. The 432 had incredible hype: "The vacuum tube, the transistor, the microprocessor - at least once in a generation an electronic device arises to shock and strain designers' understanding. The…

I recently revisited the Oberon and LISP systems for inspiration in designing better architectures. Was considering dusting off SICP again to see if I could apply their refinement technique for a certified compiler. Plenty of wisdom in these old books. Another benefit: that I remembered Oberon gave me a default recommendation post-Snowden when certain people were getting too paranoid to trust anything. I told them that Oberon, LISP machines, and Forth had very low subversion odds while being highly traceable…