Niklaus Wirth

p-code

Niklaus Wirth specified a simple p-code machine in the 1976 book Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs. The machine had 3 registers - a program counter p, a base register b, and a top-of-stack register t. There were 8 instructions:

zach lieberman on Twitter / X

Today I was able to weave a line from Myron Krueger in a talk I gave : Computation is the medium of our lifetimes - it’s not just a technical medium but a cultural medium as well. We should explore the culture of computation.— zach lieberman (@zachlieberman) April 10, 2024

Humanities in the Machine - Blain Smith

There is something quietly remarkable about the people who built the foundations of modern computing. Not their technical achievements, though those are extraordinary. What is remarkable is where they came from before they ever touched a machine.

J Notation as a Tool of Thought

Kenneth Iverson’s 1964 language, APL, won him the Turing Award. His award lecture, Notation as a Tool of Thought, argued that better notations would lead people to deeper insights about mathematics. He provided a number of examples ranging across linear algebra, arithmetic, probability, and logic. Unfortunately, most of the mathematics he covers isn’t relevant to programming. However, his core idea still applies, and changing how we describe programs changes how we think about them.

Computational statistics

Computational statistics, or statistical computing, is the study which is the intersection of statistics and computer science, and refers to the statistical methods that are enabled by using computational methods. It is the area of computational science specific to the mathematical science of statistics. This area is fast developing. The view that the broader concept of computing must be taught as part of general statistical education is gaining momentum.

martin kriegeskorte

Full stack engineer from Berlin.

The Next 7000 Programming Languages

Landin’s seminal paper “The next 700 programming languages” considered programming languages prior to 1966 and speculated on the next 700. Half-a-century on, we cast programming languages in a Darwinian ‘tree of life’ and explore languages, their features (genes) and language evolution from the viewpoint of ‘survival of the fittest’.

Phillip M. Alday

I was a struggling mathematician, then a linguist and now a (cognitive) neuroscientist, but will probably always be a hacker. I also moonlight as an applied statistician. These are some of the things I’ve done along the way.

Seymour Papert

Seymour Aubrey Papert was a South African-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator, who spent most of his career teaching and researching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, and of the constructionist movement in education. He was co-inventor, with Wally Feurzeig and Cynthia Solomon, of the Logo programming language.

Aaron Steven White

computational semanticist. into modular synths and tiki. https://aaronstevenwhite.io

Thomas Wolf on Twitter / X

wtf is this way to handle mathematicians work and scientific communicationTLDR: Leven and Tristan worked over several months on one of the Millenium Prize Problems with various AIs to reach final interesting results. OpenAI apparently heard about it in the last days and… https://t.co/zNozwkFcFO pic.twitter.com/XcefJ17AQe— Thomas Wolf (@Thom_Wolf) September 8, 2026

computational product market fit

‘computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.’ — edsger dijkstra