[HN Gopher] Ancient Babylonian Algorithms: The Earliest Programs
___________________________________________________________________
Ancient Babylonian Algorithms: The Earliest Programs
Author : robbbminson
Score : 106 points
Date : 2021-02-27 09:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historyofinformation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historyofinformation.com)
| [deleted]
| robterrin wrote:
| Wonder if Knuth's work in 1972 influenced Neal Stephenson's "Snow
| Crash" in 1992? Certainly seems like it did!
|
| Solid essay on ancient myth and "Snow Crash" here:
| https://www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr/snowcrash.html
| kazinator wrote:
| > _One of the ways to help make computer science respectable is
| to show that is deeply rooted in history._
|
| This is not a sure thing, by any means:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_profession_(phrase)
|
| People do not automatically respect new professions.
|
| Professions that very new are not respected due to lack of
| recognition; but some old professions are not highly respected
| either.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| "When G*d created Eve from Adam's rib, he was doing surgery,
| and so surgery is the oldest profession" said the surgeon.
|
| "Before that, He created the Heavens and the Earth out of
| Chaos, so architecture is the oldest profession" said the
| architect.
|
| "Well, yes, but where do you think the Chaos came from?" asked
| the software developer.
| zekrioca wrote:
| Can someone clarify the calculation in the given example? What
| are stuff like "8,20"?
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| FTA:
|
| > In this case, 50 stands for 5/6 and 8,20 stands for 8 1/2
| herodotus wrote:
| Babylonians used a base-60 number system. Here is the wikipedia
| link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal
|
| 8,20 is 8+20/60 = 8 1/3
| hprotagonist wrote:
| we do too. Though these days it's mostly for time only.
| jonsen wrote:
| "...and is still used--in a modified form--for measuring
| time, angles, and geographic coordinates."
| agumonkey wrote:
| Link to Knuth pdf
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160303185340/https://steiner.m...
|
| The more I read about math history the less I care about
| electronic computers. There was a lot of interesting problems and
| abstractions even 400 years ago. I find it funny that these
| people had no choice but to understand large and complex with
| nothing but pen and paper.. and it seems like the less computing
| power the smarter the thinking.
| pm90 wrote:
| There are a lot more people today that do think very hard to
| come up with smarter algorithms. Most likely more than at any
| point in human history.
| SilasX wrote:
| Yes, because technical interviews select for people who can
| do it on the fly :-p
| konjin wrote:
| Writing things on paper is just a term rewriting system [0]
| which is just another universal computational system.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_rewriting_system
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Turing was explicitly trying to abstract from the sort of
| symbol manipulation mathematicians of his time did with pen
| and paper.
|
| Presumably his angelic counterparts have no need of an
| infinite tape of finite symbols, and can use a single square
| with an infinite repertoire of symbols instead.
| konjin wrote:
| Turing was interested in mechanical manipulation. The
| church turning thesis showed that he neededn't have
| bothered since lambda calculus, a term rewriting system, is
| equivalent to a Turing machine and dozens of other methods
| of effective computation. You can pick which ever is the
| most aesthetically pleasing.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| People forget that prior to electronic computers we had
| mechanical computers: abacus, slide rules and other devices.
|
| Slide rules go back all the way to the 17th century, and the
| abacus goes back thousands of years.
|
| Romans engineers, for example, were known to carry portable
| hand abaci.
| konjin wrote:
| You can easily use any checkered board as a binary
| calculator. I'm quite convinced that all the games like chess
| started life as things to do on your calculator when you were
| bored.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Slide rules are actually my favorite thing.. two pieces of
| wood to leverage logarithmic relationships (quite abstract
| IMO) and compute faster. Just through gradual marks and a few
| concepts.
| jonsen wrote:
| I'm with you on "just" for "a few concepts", but not for
| the marking:
|
| _Slide Rule for the Modern Day_ :
|
| https://www.instructables.com/Slide-Rule-for-the-Modern-
| Day/
|
| I mean, the "knowledge" of where the marks go is not the
| same as the "know-how" required to put them there ;-)
| agumonkey wrote:
| Alright it's indeed subtler than expected. Still a
| seemingly looking thing that is actually packed with
| mathematics. The point was a bit that sophistication
| doesn't come from the underlying technology.
| amatic wrote:
| Greeks had a mechanical cube-root finder.
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/3615516?seq=1
|
| (btw. are scihub links allowed on HN?)
| amatic wrote:
| A 1979 article on ancient catapults, includes the
| description of the cube-root finding device:
|
| http://jaanmarss.planet.ee/juhendid/Kaugrelvad_Antiik-
| Kreeka...
| wanderingstan wrote:
| That link only got me the first page (on mobile Safari). This
| link has entire pdf:
| http://www.realtechsupport.org/UB/NP/Numeracy_BabylonianAlgo...
| User23 wrote:
| > I find it funny that these people had no choice but to
| understand large and complex with nothing but pen and paper.
|
| Some took it even further. The reason Plato gives for why
| Socrates wrote nothing down is that writing is an aid to memory
| and a form of crutch for the mind. And just as walking around
| on crutches will weaken a healthy man's legs over time, so will
| leaning on writing weaken his memory.
| mc32 wrote:
| So can we test against an illiterate population and test
| their memory, recall and problem solving techniques ?
| quercusa wrote:
| There have been such studies* of at least the first two,
| showing that pre-literate people are far better at
| memorizing ( _e.g._ , long epic poems) than literate
| people.
|
| * Yes, citation needed. Searching...
| quercusa wrote:
| How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
| https://daily.jstor.org/how-do-we-know-that-epic-poems-
| were-...
|
| Previously on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14640519
| phreeza wrote:
| The alternative view is that the right tools are more like a
| bicycle and less like crutches. The art is knowing which is
| which I suppose.
| gumby wrote:
| Was your use of this example a reference to Steve Job's
| referring of the computer as the "Bicycle of the mind"? I
| think he might have been quoting Stewart Brand.
| cyberbanjo wrote:
| More zeppelins than bikes.
| agumonkey wrote:
| right i remember this, it was framed as a history of anti-
| tech and purism .. in any case I think most brains, even the
| smartest will need a bit of storage to avoid looping around
| old ideas that were proven wrong hence paper
| tanylak wrote:
| I agree. The over reliance on technology is making us less
| aware of our innate abilities to reason things out.
|
| Easy access to information might make us "smarter" in a sense
| that we know how to find this information. But let's face it,
| we don't actually know how to find stuff. Google does that.
|
| We just type simple questions that any 10 year old can do.
| simonh wrote:
| The more you learn, the more the surface area of your inquiry
| expands. Each answer Spurs several new questions. A 20 year
| old will have far more sophisticated questions they want to
| ask and problems they need to solve than they would have had
| at 10.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Another point, I have diplomas, am patient, like precision...
| then I watched youtube videos about electronics, woodwork
| etc.. and I saw how things are done. I expected easy
| transfer, yet when I tried to do them I struggled.
|
| The reading knowledge is not know-how.. these are two
| distinct categories. The web gives you metadata in a way..
| but so far it seems only experience gives you know-how. You
| can see all the diagrams about how to cut wood straight ..
| but until you saw all the ways you can fail your edge, curve
| your blade .. it's not 'can do' knowledge, only potential.
|
| And I found this in dev too.. I've done tutorials, moocs,
| books about non trivial stuff.. but making an app was a
| totally different kind of effort. It wasn't intellectually
| hard, just different and you don't know that until you do it.
| Like hundreds of stupid details to juggle and go around to
| finish something properly.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| The gulf between theory and practice is larger in practice
| than in theory.
| tomcam wrote:
| Love it! I just googled that quote and you seem to have
| originated it. I have a little list of quotes and their
| authors. Do you mind revealing your name so I can
| attribute it? Or emailing me to the address in my
| profile?
| booleandilemma wrote:
| It's just a modification of this quote:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24320775/
| tomcam wrote:
| How did I miss that. Thank you very much
| agumonkey wrote:
| maybe we should rename some 'theory' classes as 'pretty
| ok approximation of future problems'
| carapace wrote:
| "Knowledge is only rumor until it's in the muscle." (I've
| heard that that is a New Guinea proverb but I don't know
| for sure.)
| [deleted]
| dave0585 wrote:
| 'This in the procedure' make it really sound like a 'END PROGRAM'
| max_ wrote:
| >One of the ways to help make computer science respectable is to
| show that is deeply rooted in history, not just a short-lived
| phenomenon. Therefore it is natural to turn to the earliest
| surviving documents which deal with computation, and to study how
| people approached the subject nearly 4000 years ago.
|
| Interesting.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Isn't that field that superset computer science called
| computational thinking? (which is quite equivalent to semi-
| formal applied problem solving)
| User23 wrote:
| This is why I prefer the term Computing Science. Naming the
| field after the tool is like calling astronomy Telescope
| Science.
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| CS in Swedish is usually "data science" (datavetenskap).
|
| Some universities use "Department of Computing Science" as
| well as the English name.
| SilasX wrote:
| Dijkstra: "Computer Science is no more about computers than
| astronomy is about telescopes." (Since nobody's said it
| explicitly and in case you were referencing it.)
|
| That is, telescopes are, in practice, the most common _way_
| to learn about stars( /celstial bodies), but the stars are
| the target of study, with telescopes an incidental tool.
|
| Computer science is about e.g. resource scaling for solving
| particular problems, with electronic computers just being one
| _way_ those insights can be applied.
| cambalache wrote:
| That Dijkstra's phrase is genius because at first sight it
| just seems a pedantic point made by the professor,
| a_boutade_ if you will, but the more you think about it the
| truer it is, even obvious.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| I never thought about it, this is a great observation!
| yesenadam wrote:
| Abelson makes this point in the opening seconds of his 1986
| _Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_ course.
|
| Lecture 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J_xL4IGhJA
|
| He explains that Computer Science is a terrible name - it's
| not a science, and "not about computers in the same sense
| that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and
| biology is not really about microscopes and petri dishes".
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| This is actually a pretty funny fact that I think most,
| including myself, have never thought of.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| They also invented Fourier transform.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_analysis
|
| "A primitive form of harmonic series dates back to ancient
| Babylonian mathematics, where they were used to compute
| ephemerides (tables of astronomical positions)."
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-28 23:01 UTC)