links.lmorchard.com - #compsci

Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90 | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 22:04:01 +0000

Over two decades at MIT, Hamilton forged new paths in computer science and engineering. Her groundbreaking work included leading the team that programmed the first computers that took humans to the moon.

Tags: #compsci #history #mit #nasa

davidbau.com Does Computer Science Still Exist?

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 17:02:30 +0000

But my NetHack experience suggests something different. The skills that matter at scale are somehow still about programming, but they are not coding skills. They are: deciding what to build. Figuring out what to test and how to know if the tests are honest. Building tools that make invisible things visible. Managing coordination across agents. Knowing when a metric is a figleaf. Recognizing where the real complexity lives in a system, and routing attention there instead of everywhere else. These are the conceptual skills that have always been underneath large-scale programming. They are the hard part that the mechanical craft obscured. The reality is that CS has never really been about writing code. Underneath coding is critical thinking about algorithms, engineering principles, analytical methods. It is the science of managing complexity, and code is just the medium we manage it in. In the era of AI code generation, the field does not die. It transforms.

Tags: #ai #career #codegen #compsci #llms

LLMs Can Get "Brain Rot"!

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 19:12:32 +0000

We propose and test the LLM Brain Rot Hypothesis: continual exposure to junk web text induces lasting cognitive decline in large language models (LLMs). To causally isolate data quality, we run controlled experiments on real Twitter/X corpora, constructing junk and reversely controlled datasets via two orthogonal operationalizations: M1 (engagement degree) and M2 (semantic quality), with matched token scale and training operations across conditions.

Tags: #ai #compsci #genai #llms

Phrase origin: Why do we "call" functions? – Arthur O'Dwyer – Stuff mostly about C++

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 02:58:49 +0000

On StackExchange, someone asks why programmers talk about “calling” a function. Several possible allusions spring to mind: Calling a function is like calling on a friend — we go, we stay a while, we come back. Calling a function is like calling for a servant — a summoning to perform a task. Calling a function is like making a phone call — we ask a question and get an answer from outside ourselves. The true answer seems to be the middle one — “calling” as in “calling up, summoning” — but indirectly, originating in the notion of “calling for” a subroutine out of a library of subroutines in the same way that we’d “call for” a book out of a closed-stack library of books.

Tags: #compsci #history #programming

Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 19:06:53 +0000

After people stopped caring, artificial intelligence got more interesting.

Tags: #ai #compsci #genai #ml

I don't have time to learn React - Keith Cirkel

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 18:51:59 +0000

When I mentor early career developers and they ask me what they should learn, I can't say React, they don't have time. I mean sure, pick up enough React to land you the inevitable job doing it, but it's not going to level up your career. Anyone with $5,000-$10,000 can make their way through a bootcamp and scrape their way through an interview, but it's a competitive market and it's usually quite evident when your interviewing a bootcamp candidate. Stand out by picking up some more fundamentals

Tags: #compsci #react #web #webdev

Big-O Algorithm Complexity Cheat Sheet (Know Thy Complexities!) @ericdrowell

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 22:36:55 +0000

Hi there! This webpage covers the space and time Big-O complexities of common algorithms used in Computer Science. When preparing for technical interviews in the past, I found myself spending hours crawling the internet putting together the best, average, and worst case complexities for search and sorting algorithms so that I wouldn't be stumped when asked about them. Over the last few years, I've interviewed at several Silicon Valley startups, and also some bigger companies, like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and Uber, and each time that I prepared for an interview, I thought to myself "Why hasn't someone created a nice Big-O cheat sheet?". So, to save all of you fine folks a ton of time, I went ahead and created one. Enjoy! - Eric

Tags: #bigo #compsci

parnas-1979.pdf

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 20:54:11 +0000

Designing software to be extensible and easily contracted is discussed as a special case of design for change. A number of ways that extension and contraction problems manifest themselves in current software are explained.

Tags: #compsci #software

Before You Can Have Smalltalk, You Must First Defeat Capitalism. — Matthew Gaudet

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 06:09:51 +0000

The title of this blog post is at least a little sarcastic, but I think is an honest to goodness truth: If you want to build a future that involves beautiful systems like Smalltalk, you must first rebuild the economic environment wherein it could be built. Wherein it could succeed! These systems idealized in lamentations at SPLASH all seem to me to be products of economic surplus combined with the right people. We need an economy that has surpluses around for people to do explorations.

Tags: #compsci #economy #programming #smalltalk

AI Winter Is Coming

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 02:48:46 +0000

This is how we’re headed for another AI winter, just as we saw with the fall of data science, crypto, and the modern data stack. And that’s actually a good thing. The promoters will hop onto the next trendy buzzword, while the real producers will keep moving forward, building a more capable future for AI.

Tags: #ai #compsci #ml

a blog by biggiemac42

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 19:19:05 +0000

Select any pattern that can be built in Life – for example, the Waterbear. Begin with a small number of gliders (now 15) in an otherwise empty Game of Life universe. After enough time goes by, those gliders need to build that pattern. No extra leftover debris, no stray scaffolding, just a pure synthesis of whatever you chose.

Tags: #compsci #conway #imported:pinboard #life #math

a blog by biggiemac42

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 19:19:05 +0000

Tags: #compsci #conway #life #math

Building ucblogo (Berkeley Logo) on the Raspberry Pi 400 | Dan Malec's Blog

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 18:28:03 +0000

The following are my notes on using the two together – building and installing ucblogo (Berkeley Logo) on the Raspberry Pi 400. Hopefully, others will take this journey too.

Tags: #compsci #imported:pinboard #logo #raspi

Building ucblogo (Berkeley Logo) on the Raspberry Pi 400 | Dan Malec's Blog

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 18:28:03 +0000

The following are my notes on using the two together – building and installing ucblogo (Berkeley Logo) on the Raspberry Pi 400. Hopefully, others will take this journey too.

Tags: #compsci #logo #raspi

Programmer as wizard, programmer as engineer

Fri, 04 Jan 2019 19:32:33 +0000

Are we just trying to solve a problem quickly, or are we trying to build a robust solution? I got into programming at least in part because it seemed like the closest thing to magic that really exists. So I’m going to call these two distinct styles wizarding and engineering.

Tags: #compsci #dev #devops #imported:pinboard #programming