Also tricky is what is meant by 'invented'? You can invent something without actually physically building it. In which case I think you'd have a good argument for saying it was Alan Turing as he was the one to come up with the idea of a universal machine and general purpose (personal or not) computers.

It's one of the (MANY) annoying things in the Imitation Game film. They confuse the Bombe with a computer and even go as far as mentioning this in the closing credits.

I think Babbage and his Analytical Engine were incredibly ahead of their time and also what Zuse did, pretty much by himself, was also amazing.

Once the fundamental ideas were there it's just a natural progression towards making things smaller, more powerful, more usable for normal people.

Now we seem to have reached a point where most normal people (and that includes no one here ) see a computer as little more than an appliance. I am always complaining at work (I test software) that tablets have gotten us to the point where things are so dumbed down interacting with a computer is little more than an ape jabbing randomly at the screen with his fat little fingers. It annoys me we have to make the software work on the most unusable devices. It makes for some interesting UI designs these days.

I really dislike tablets (although I do have one and keep hoping it dies soon). So would you call a tablet a personal computer?

Simon

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My 6502 related blog: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/bb/category/6502-computer

Just because Babbage's Analytical Machine was going to be the size of a locomotive doesn't mean we can't think of it as a personal computer!

In some ways a tablet falls short of being a personal computer, but
- it does contain all the pieces of a computer
- it does everything ordinary people want to do on a computer
- with some restrictions and difficulty it is possible to write programs for it
- it runs a browser, which can run an emulation of a computer

I think the last one might be the winner: we no longer use computers, but we use browsers constantly, and they implement a fully featured programming language and enable us to run emulations of general purpose computers.

As Turing proved, an emulation is just as powerful as the real thing.

But your point is valid and important: the average computer user is ever further removed from programmability as we move from 8-bits with Basic to PCs with DOS to PCs with Windows to tablets with iOS.

For legal purposes, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (to use an example) does not define ideas as inventions, so Turing would not have been credited with inventing anything had he submitted a patent application on his ideas.

In past years, one had to actually build and submit a working example of one's invention in order to obtain a patent. That requirement soon became unwieldy and submission of suitable drawings, as well as the detailed description of the invention, took over. The key aspect was that it had to be possible for anyone "skilled in the art" to be able to build a working example from the patent documentation. The rise of software patents seems to have done an end run around these requirements.


His "engines" were to have been steam-operated, which had they become useful to business and commerce, would have created some interesting problems. Imagine the boss saying, "Simon, we have to run the payroll." And you replying, "Sir, we don't have enough coal for the boiler."


This is progression of computer technology that was predicted in the 1970s. Just to show how little most folks know about operating a computer, I occasionally demonstrate that it is possible to use most of Microsoft Windows with keystrokes only. Observers are usually dumbfounded that the mouse isn't as essential as it would seem, not realizing that it is a crutch that is there to prop up the naive.


I call a tablet an overpriced toy that causes people to waste an enormous amount of time poking around on "social media." The absurd is seeing several couples sitting at a table in a restaurant, all of them making like monkeys on their gadgets and not saying a word to each other.

As for hoping that your tablet soon dies, you can accelerate the process by using it as a wheel-stop for a locomotive.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Ref: Method and apparatus for effecting computation by means of inscription and erasure of a plurality of symbols on a finite tape.

A lot of people do call Ada Lovelace the first computer programmer so I think Babbage definitely has a look in!

It is interesting now that there is this big push into trying to teach kids more about computers. We have Arduinos (ok, not really a PC), RaspberryPi, Galileo and I saw the BBC are doing one too now (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33409311).

I always wonder how effective these things are at making programming more mainstream. Is it just a fad? I am guessing most people here are like me and we just picked things up ourselves because it was what interested us? At least now the ones who really are interested aren't going to be outsiders as everyone is doing it! Be interesting to see what the result of it all is in a few years.

Simon

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My 6502 related blog: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/bb/category/6502-computer

I think programming is a mental discipline - like teaching numeracy and simple mathematics, teaching simple programming seems to me to have merit. Not only does the student get a glimpse as to how things are made - it's not magic after all - but they get a chance to learn how to think logically, procedurally, symbolically. And some will eventually move into technical employment or employment in technical businesses, where a bit of understanding will help.

We used to hear similar doubts about teaching arithmetic or mathematics.

I don't think they do that now. They all use tablets

Definitely teaching this stuff is a good idea. I just worry that the people in charge might push it a bit much. Like you say it's a mental discipline but that does mean it won't suit everyone. Sometimes it seems to me there is a bit of a 'well, we'll just teach all kids about computers' approach. It's a bit too blanket or simplistic. Is knowing programming for everyone really as essential as reading and arithmetic say?

I don't have strong opinions or doubts one way or another (maybe since I have no kids!). It's just interesting to see how it all works. At least now it's more mainstream. In the 80-90s (and earlier I am guessing) you were always one of the weird kids if you were into anything computer/technology related.

Simon

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My 6502 related blog: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/bb/category/6502-computer

I liken computer programming to creating or composing music. On one level, programming is a very logical sort of activity, as Ed notes. Computers precisely obey rules that are defined by their architecture and all the electronics in their innards. Music also has some precise (mathematical) rules that govern harmony and chord structures. That this is so is evident in the fact that computers can be made to "compose" music.

However, there is also an element of creativity to the process that cannot be taught. I've known computer programmers who were technically proficient and knew the machine and the language backward and forward. However, they seemed to not be able to use their imagination to visualize a solution to the problem being solved or task to be performed, and would write reams of code to solve trivial problems.

I've also known musicians who were technically proficient on their instruments but sounded machine-like when they played. They would hit all the right notes at the right time, but the result wasn't musical. All the music education in the world could not make them be something that they could not be: artistic.

We can teach students how to write code in whatever language is being used, just as we can teach them the fundamentals of music. Getting them to use imagination to visualize what has to be done to accomplish the task at hand is not nearly as simple. That, I think, is an innate skill, not a learned one.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

That was the case in the 1950s when I was in elementary school. Some things just never change.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I have used Asus Transformer tablets for the last four years. When the tablet is connected to the keyboard it's definitely a personal computer. I have all the interfaces I need then (the kbd dock adds I/F among other things). I didn't need the notebook computer anymore, the Asus tablet does it all and more. I am a software developer and I spend half of my time away from the company so I need a computer which is more than a browser. With OpenVPN and VNC everything I can't do locally is handled. This is actually Android, and unfortunately Asus now focuses on Windows tablets which are inferior in every way, including screen resolution. So I can't get a replacement when this one is worn out, which will happen. They're not that robust.

As for programming, I'm with BDD. Including the part about music - and it seems to me that there is a particular subset of programmer types who are also musicians at some level.

That would describe me and at least one other well-known member of this forum.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I'm a life-long musician, though do I count as well-known here yet?

The tablet (and especially the phone) do make the computer more "personal" in one way: portability. It's always on your person, and you can always access its computational features (though generally through pre-written apps, not commanding it directly). Battery life does get in the way of that ideal as well. However, I would also vehemently agree that the interface is horrible. There's no instruction or indication about what you have to do to the screen to get it to do something.

Since Android's last update, in order to get to your list of installed apps in the app store interface, you have to swipe in from the left side of the screen. There's NOTHING there indicating that's what you need to do, I just tried it on a lark a few days ago after having simply discounted the option as gone for a few weeks, as that's where the panel happened to be in the last revision. Horrible, and completely uncommunicative to the user. Even CLIs are more user friendly than that, with tab completion and help commands.

Also, I've got to throw in that Zuse created floating-point binary representations of numbers from scratch as his starting point, while Babbage was just spinning 10-digit wheels around in a fixed-point format. More respect to Konrad, especially since he didn't build know anything about Boole, Babbage, etc as a starting point. :smug smiley: (yes, I'm a bit of a Zuse fanboy, how did you know? )

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WFDis Interactive 6502 Disassembler
AcheronVM: A Reconfigurable 16-bit Virtual CPU for the 6502 Microprocessor

You're well known here, except that we didn't know you were a musician. What do you play? I think BDD was referring to a certain cellist, your truly; but Dr. Jefyll is also a bassist (on bass viol, not bass guitar). There's a picture of him playing on his website.

In some ways, yes, the old CLIs with a paper manual were more friendly, even before memory and storage were big enough to have online help. Of course today good manual-writing is a lost art, and there's also a vicious spiral: No one takes the time to write a good manual because they don't think anyone will read it, and no one reads the manual because it's not well written. There are exceptions of course. On the HP Museum calculator forum, there is one man in particular, Ángel Martin, who is still writing new software modules for the HP-41 calculator that went out of production for 25 years ago, and he writes beautiful manuals. Examples are http://hp41.claughan.com/file/SANDMATH_44%20Manual.pdf for his Sandmath module (although maybe you still shouldn't expect to understand it if your math skills aren't already in the stratosphere), and http://hp41.claughan.com/file/41Z_Manual.pdf for his 41z module which adds over a hundred complex-number functions, written in assembly for maximum performance, and adds a true, 4-level complex stack, complex keyboard, polar mode (in addition to the usual rectangular), and other things that go along with it.

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

Let's see, in order of learning, I play piano, acoustic/electric/bass guitar, drums, and electric cello (6-string). I tend to spend most time on bass guitar, as that's something that everybody's lacking for a good player. I've been meaning to do some youtube stuff for some time, especially to keep my chops up. But that takes quite a lot of work & commitment, and a youtube channel doesn't amount to much if you don't keep it fresh.

Speaking of manuals, I was blown away the first time I read the one from Dr. Nim, a simple mechanical computer game where you play against the machine for those who don't know. Not only does it show how to play the game, but introduces boolean logic, binary numbers, flip flops, and gets into lengthy discussion about the nature of thought and computation. An astounding piece of writing for what I presume was marketed as a children's toy.

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WFDis Interactive 6502 Disassembler
AcheronVM: A Reconfigurable 16-bit Virtual CPU for the 6502 Microprocessor

(see the new thread about musicianship over here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3365)