> The future, we are told, will belong to those familiar with the computer. What a joke this would be if only it didn't victimize so many innocent bystanders.
prescient. this is one if the best articles i have read in years. the 1970s were a liminal place, between great eras. montreal thrived. there are few people this smart today who talk about the future with such accuracy because its hard to describe it using essential first principles- like how languages are just made of strings, which are lists, which are vectors, which are tables, which are matrices. its the simplest thing in the world if you think about it...
Nice interview. While using APL professionally for around ten years, I had the opportunity to attend lectures with Iverson and a number of the top APL guys from the era (the guys who wrote all the APL books of the time). Talk about a guy and an idea that was way ahead of its time. I still have a picture I took with him during on of the annual APL conferences in the 80's.
The episode of Array Cast released prior to this one is also worth a listen: I.P. Sharp and Associates - A Company Ahead of its Time[1].
It is also pieced together with “found” audio of Iverson and others, and it’s narrated by Bob Therriault. Subjectively, it quickly became one of my favorite audio pieces of all time!
The I.P. Sharp company sounded like a truly incredible place to work.
When i worked with a few dozen APL2 devs, there was a devoted clique who would always remind us of ways in which Sharp APL was superior to IBM's tho i can't remember details. I only remember STSC and APL2 dialects weren't all that different. And now, when i do C#, linq and kotlin, it seems like a romanization (and update) of APL.
Wow. I did enjoy putting it together, but I did not expect 'on of my favourite of all time'. Thank you.
As a critique my own work, I think it feels like a bit of a sales piece on the company and the culture, although that it is an accurate account of what the participants were saying. I also wanted to show that the aggressive commodified start up culture that seems to have been adopted is not the only way to succeed in tech. I think that was the most important message that I was trying to get across.
It's interesting how "array programming" (I think) was a sort of prediction of what we would be doing with GPUs today. (At least that's what occurred to me just now.)
Does anyone with this expertise have a sense for how APL relates to modern GPU programming? Is there an influence? Or is it a completely different model?
Array programming seems adaptable to any form of parallel processing: SIMD instructions, multi-core, or GPUs. I think it's because, in addition to their inherent parallelism, primitives are so simple that they make very few demands on an implementation. GPU code can be a lot more flexible than array programming because the processors have a bit of independence, so array primitives are not necessarily the best way to use a GPU, but they're pretty good and the limitations might make it easier for a human to think about.
"And if you say that, can we make machines that would somehow simulate that behavior so that a person could not really tell the difference whether it's a living organism or a machine, I'm sure that's already possible to a large extent."
— If you can teach it--yes, there's nothing easier. One of the things is that you could do, for example, you could simply give it a collection of poems or prose or whatever you have, and then provide a program which selects pieces from these, either individual words, individual phrases, individual passages, and so on, and merges them together according to some criterion, which you would then write into the program, and also with a certain element of chance. Usually, you know, you'd say, "Well, you want to pick this sometimes, that sometimes." Yes, you can write it, but you raise the question, what would be the point?
Although we do make the content available through text, as the editor of the episode I think there is a great benefit to hearing Dr. Iverson speak. The nuances of his humour and the warmth of his personality can not really be captured in text.
[+] [-] motohagiography|1 year ago|reply
prescient. this is one if the best articles i have read in years. the 1970s were a liminal place, between great eras. montreal thrived. there are few people this smart today who talk about the future with such accuracy because its hard to describe it using essential first principles- like how languages are just made of strings, which are lists, which are vectors, which are tables, which are matrices. its the simplest thing in the world if you think about it...
[+] [-] robomartin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] adregan|1 year ago|reply
It is also pieced together with “found” audio of Iverson and others, and it’s narrated by Bob Therriault. Subjectively, it quickly became one of my favorite audio pieces of all time!
The I.P. Sharp company sounded like a truly incredible place to work.
1: https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode91-ipsharpdoc
[+] [-] gtani|1 year ago|reply
When i worked with a few dozen APL2 devs, there was a devoted clique who would always remind us of ways in which Sharp APL was superior to IBM's tho i can't remember details. I only remember STSC and APL2 dialects weren't all that different. And now, when i do C#, linq and kotlin, it seems like a romanization (and update) of APL.
[+] [-] bobterryo|1 year ago|reply
As a critique my own work, I think it feels like a bit of a sales piece on the company and the culture, although that it is an accurate account of what the participants were saying. I also wanted to show that the aggressive commodified start up culture that seems to have been adopted is not the only way to succeed in tech. I think that was the most important message that I was trying to get across.
[+] [-] timmg|1 year ago|reply
Does anyone with this expertise have a sense for how APL relates to modern GPU programming? Is there an influence? Or is it a completely different model?
[+] [-] mlochbaum|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] drcwpl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] abrudz|1 year ago|reply
— Can you teach a computer to write poetry?
— If you can teach it--yes, there's nothing easier. One of the things is that you could do, for example, you could simply give it a collection of poems or prose or whatever you have, and then provide a program which selects pieces from these, either individual words, individual phrases, individual passages, and so on, and merges them together according to some criterion, which you would then write into the program, and also with a certain element of chance. Usually, you know, you'd say, "Well, you want to pick this sometimes, that sometimes." Yes, you can write it, but you raise the question, what would be the point?
[+] [-] anonzzzies|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bobterryo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 082349872349872|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bobterryo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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