Hacker News: pmcjones

Orbital Construction Pioneers

pmcjones — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 02:03:54 +0000

Article URL: https://orbitalconstructionpioneers.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49382809

Points: 12

# Comments: 7

New comment by pmcjones in "History of John Backus's functional programming project (draft)"

pmcjones — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:20:05 +0000

The first video is the same as https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/FP/#Backus1... .

I hadn't seen the Group Meeting video; I will add it (even though it's very rough).

I will change the entry for [Booch2007] to include the video as well as the transcript.

New comment by pmcjones in "History of John Backus's functional programming project (draft)"

pmcjones — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 20:13:38 +0000

In that first diagram (https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/FP/Composin...), A and B are supposed to be pure functional programs; side-effects are modeled by each one outputting a new version of each modified input. In the second diagram (https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/FP/Strict_H...), as actually implemented in FL, they stick to strictly leftmost-innermost evaluation order so that side-effects are at consistent (but this presumably prevents parallel evaluation).

New comment by pmcjones in "History of John Backus's functional programming project (draft)"

pmcjones — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:12:14 +0000

Can we move this conversation to email? I am not sure what diagrams you are referring to.

New comment by pmcjones in "History of John Backus's functional programming project (draft)"

pmcjones — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:55:16 +0000

Is this your project: https://github.com/metazip/pointfrip ?

New comment by pmcjones in "History of John Backus's functional programming project (draft)"

pmcjones — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 16:56:48 +0000

Thanks very much; I in turn will add a link the Related Resources section. If you'd like to be recognized as other than metazip then let me know via email.

New comment by pmcjones in "History of John Backus's functional programming project (draft)"

pmcjones — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:27:24 +0000

Author here. This is work-in-progress, not linked from top level. I'll keep working.

New comment by pmcjones in "Exploring PDP-1 Lisp (1960)"

pmcjones — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 04:14:31 +0000

Try these:

https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/LISP/lisp15...

(The third one includes the source code to PDP-1 Lisp.)

New comment by pmcjones in "Edsger Dijkstra's Library (Housed and Archived in Leuven, Belgium)"

pmcjones — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 04:16:59 +0000

For more information about Mesa, see: https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/mesa/

New comment by pmcjones in "The analog computer museum's online library"

pmcjones — Fri, 29 May 2026 20:16:28 +0000

I donated https://www.analogmuseum.org/library/beckman_EASE_installati... to this web site. The original was from my father-in-law, Professor Cyril P. Atkinson at U.C. Berkeley.

New comment by pmcjones in "Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages"

pmcjones — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 18:39:16 +0000

https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/mesa/

Mesa had DEFINITIONS modules, exceptions, subranges, and threads.

New comment by pmcjones in "On the Design of Programming Languages (1974) [pdf]"

pmcjones — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 20:07:25 +0000

Last updated 1996.

Noordung's "Wohnrad" – the precursor to rotating space station architecture

pmcjones — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 23:09:39 +0000

Article URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576525008616

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47211763

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by pmcjones in "Show HN: I wrote a technical history book on Lisp"

pmcjones — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 18:08:38 +0000

I should have given this link also: https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/LISP/book/A...

New comment by pmcjones in "Show HN: I wrote a technical history book on Lisp"

pmcjones — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 17:06:06 +0000

Sigh -- they keep changing the rules. I think you have to have a free ACM account. If you send me an email (see my home page in my profile), I'll send you a PDF.

New comment by pmcjones in "Show HN: I wrote a technical history book on Lisp"

pmcjones — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 14:26:43 +0000

The link dump includes scans of the source code and a link to this free-to-read paper on the history of the Lisp 2 project: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8267589 (I’m the author).

New comment by pmcjones in "Show HN: I wrote a technical history book on Lisp"

pmcjones — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 04:12:51 +0000

And here's an English translation of the History chapter from Stoyan's 1980 book _LISP-Anwendungsgebiete, Grundbegriffe, Geschichte_ [LISP Application, Basic Concepts, History]: https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/LISP/book/S...

New comment by pmcjones in "Show HN: I wrote a technical history book on Lisp"

pmcjones — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 04:09:46 +0000

Here are some bibliographies, including an extensive (but old) one by Herbert Stoyan. Apologies for the rough formatting of them: https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/LISP/resour...

New comment by pmcjones in "Show HN: I wrote a technical history book on Lisp"

pmcjones — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 04:06:44 +0000

And it's worth pointing out here that the book itself is now freely available: https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/542865

Grok Is Temporarily Unavailable

pmcjones — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 01:07:28 +0000

Article URL: https://status.x.ai/grok-com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46740073

Points: 3

# Comments: 0