Please see this ever modifying page which seeks to demonstrate in a poorly organized, yet humorous manner, what the hell I’m trying to accomplish with this primitive recursive state machine stuff. And as an added bonus – the great “Recursive
Why Computer Science is a failed field #2
I mentioned the phobia against mere experimentation recently, but now I have some more fascinating glimpses into “peer review”. I have some theoretical work I’m trying to finish up and get published somewhere so someone smart can do something with
Bias in academic reviewing
EURYI applications were first submitted to the relevant national research councils, who could nominate a specific number of candidates. This selection cut the proportion of women from one-quarter to one-fifth. Each national research council oversaw a drop in the number
The source of error (updated)
Here’s Edsger Dijkstra discussing the birth of the use of axiomatics in computer science – the start of “formal methods” research. What’s striking is the assumed choice between “axiomatic” and “mechanistic” as if there was no other way. In a
Dijkstra versus Perlis (updated)
Dijkstra wrote: He [Perlis] published a very obnoxious paper arguing against a mathematical approach to programming cite The paper by De Millo, Lipton and Perlis starts as follows: Many people have argued that computer programming should strive to become more like mathematics.
Operating system research – 16 years perspective
(links and dates fixed March 15 2015 – thanks to Luu and pm90 at news.y.combinator for digging this up) October 2008: It’s somewhat funny and somewhat sad to read this thread on the old USENET. Starting out with Andy Tanenbaum’s proposed list
Watering down computer science, Java, and feminism
This old note by Spolsky explains why the shift to java-only in computer science classes is harmful and reminds me of two events in my old career as an academic. One was when a student came by my office to