[HN Gopher] A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and ...
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A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the
Indeterminate [pdf]
Author : Smaug123
Score : 74 points
Date : 2021-04-13 23:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (andymatuschak.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (andymatuschak.org)
| stevesimmons wrote:
| "A small computer with mass memory and video-type display now
| costs $37,000"
|
| And since $1 in 1965 is worth $7.27 today, that $37,000 is really
| $270,000.
|
| Incidentally, I found https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm for the
| cost of memory over time. In 1965, memory cost $2.6m per
| megabyte. Today it is $0.003!
| noir_lord wrote:
| I love these old comp-sci papers.
|
| Makes you wonder what amazing ideas are buried in them that where
| ahead of their time then but aren't now.
|
| So much of what we use today came out of academia a couple of
| decades ago - I've made the joke before that if you want to see
| what the front-end folks will be doing next year look what was
| the hot research 25 years ago.
| whytaka wrote:
| Do you have an example of this?
| noir_lord wrote:
| http://conal.net/papers/icfp97/
|
| Functional Reactive Animation - 1997
|
| Functional Reactive Programming is (one of) the current
| hotness.
| cratermoon wrote:
| - D. L. Parnas, _On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing
| Systems into Modules_ 1972
|
| - Liskov, B _Programming With Abstract Data Types_ 1974
|
| - ______ _A behavioral notion of subtyping_ , 1994
|
| - Waldo et al, _A note on distributed computing_ , 1997
| lalaithion wrote:
| 2003: https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/research/publication/a-user-...
|
| 2021: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/lambda-
| the-ult...
|
| Not quite 25 years, but it was a paper published by microsoft
| research, about a microsoft project, that took 18 years to be
| implemented.
| macintux wrote:
| Bret Victor's classic talk "The Future of Programming" is
| worth watching on this subject.
|
| http://worrydream.com/dbx/
| ggrrhh_ta wrote:
| Bhuyan L.N.'s 1984 paper to be concrete, but in general,
| Valerio M.'s papers, Lamport papers, some old results from
| Knuth...
| throwaway823882 wrote:
| I remember my dismay when I realized years ago that successive
| generations of software developers don't know anything their
| predecessors did. It takes about a decade or more for them to
| pick it up by osmosis from their peers (or HN). I don't know
| what the hell is going on in Computer Science classes, but they
| sure aren't teaching enough history.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Marianne Bellotti's new book, *Kill it with Fire" has an
| entire chapter, titled "Time is a Flat Circle", devoted to
| this sort of institutional amnesia.
| zokier wrote:
| Your comment is directly contradictory. You say that
| developers pick stuff up by osmosis from their peers, but at
| the same time do not know anything from their predecessors.
| How does that work?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Peers and predecessors are not the same.
| ggrrhh_ta wrote:
| I understand the author must be the "Ted Nelson"
| (https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTedNelson). He has always been
| such a visionary. Such an immensely articulate person. His
| youtube channel is full of gems; his Computer for Cynics' series
| is great. His chapter on How Bitcoin Actually works
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CMucDjJQ4E) is a "must see" for
| journalists and people that come from non technological domains -
| still current and at the same time visionary for a video recorded
| in 2014 about Bitcoin.
| EngrRavi wrote:
| Ok, so that's how an emacs buffer works.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Andy Matuschak pointed out on Twitter that this paper from 1965
| has a jaw-droppingly beautiful title, but then I read it and it's
| actually fascinating. It's an exploration from the idea of the
| memex, as imagined before personal computers were a thing,
| towards what kind of structure is sufficiently general to capture
| the vast, sprawling, _inconstant_ domains of thought.
| lainga wrote:
| Are you familiar with the author or does the Tweet mention him?
| He would famously go on to spend a large part of his career
| attempting to implement something roughly like this paper
| describes, and inspired by the Memex.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Oh, amazing - I knew the name in a "that rings a bell" way,
| and I knew what Project Xanadu was, but I didn't realise they
| were linked! Thanks :)
| gumby wrote:
| > but I didn't realise they were linked!
|
| I see what you did there.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I see something of this in the plumbing of git. "pies of entries
| and lists? By patching techniques, of course. Variant entries and
| lists can take virtually no space, being modification data plus
| pointers to the original. When a modified version of a list or
| entry is created, the machine patches the original with the
| changes necessary to make the modified version"
| gumby wrote:
| dang, please add (1965) to the title. Ted really is a visionary.
| gnzoidberg wrote:
| Any paper with an Edward Gorey reference gets my vote.
| polytely wrote:
| I'm fascinated by these sort of ideas about how to structure data
| for personal archives, but most of the stuff I've read about it
| is quite old. Are there any recent innovations or ideas in this
| area or has everything basically been explored?
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