Passages from the Life of a PhilosopherCharles Babbage
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
by Charles Babbage · first published 2009
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2010–2026first – last mentioned
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'Passages from the life of a Philosopher' was a very insightful read. We were this close to becoming a steampunk society! Here's the Difference Engine implemented in Clojure[0] and Pythton[1]. [0] https://gist.github.com/divs1210/6e388a31d4e0a425efe7…
on “Sketch of the Analytical Engine, with Notes by Ada Lovelace (1842)” ↗…started with a simple calculating device and, thinking about it more deeply, single-handedly came up with a Turing-complete design and was writing programs for it. • I started reading Babbage's memoirs "Passages From the Life of a Philosopher" (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?ke...) after seeing an intriguing Knuth reference to it (see Russ Cox's blog post https://research.swtch.com/tictactoe "Play Tic-Tac-Toe with…
on “It's often said that the Analytical Engine was before its time” ↗…of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage - Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864), ch. 5 "Difference Engine No. 1"
on “Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood” ↗…you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" .... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. --Babbage (1864), Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, ch. 5 "Difference Engine No. 1" You can't reasonably use an encoder optimized for PSNR and then "ding" it for producing output with bad SSIM, or vice-versa.
on “Real world analysis of google's webp format versus jpg” ↗…of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, 1864
on “Algorithmic Bias Was Born in the 1980s” ↗…usual history and I don't think these two examples establish the "turns out to not be true at all": • Charles Babbage lived 1791–1871, dying a couple of months before his 80th birthday. He wrote his Passages from the Life of a Philosopher in 1864. • The Swedish difference engine, produced by Scheutz father and son, is mentioned in these memoirs. At the time, it was regarded as a smaller-scale/toy/prototype version of the Difference Engine…
on “It's often said that the Analytical Engine was before its time” ↗…they collaborated and swapped ideas on the notes, and she corrected an error in his algorithm - maybe they deserve credit for pair programming too :) [1]http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html [2]Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, Babbage
on “Today is Ada Lovelace Day” ↗…studied during the day all the minor accessories, and after two o'clock in the morning I found that repose which the nuisances of the London streets only allow from that hour until six in the morning." Passages from the life of a philosopher Charles Babbage
on “What skills do self-taught programmers commonly lack?” ↗…put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ . . . I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.” — Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)
on “Rust and the Future of Systems Programming [video]” ↗…his mechanical computing "difference" engine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carry-lookahead_adder Apparently, he was proud of that invention, only almost nobody was able to appreciate it then. From "Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864) by Charles Babbage" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Passages_from_the_Life_of_a_P... "The first idea was, naturally, to add each digit successively. This, however, would occupy much time if…
on “Math Invented for Moon Landing Helps Your Flight Arrive on Time” ↗Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, and A Tangled Tale are probably our most MathML-heavy books. Books from the PD era are not very likely to feature math serious enough to require MathML. This is probably for the best... MathML support…
on “Standard Ebooks” ↗…you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. — Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
on “Show HN: The largest collection of ChatGPT jailbreaks on the internet” ↗…of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. — Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864), chapter 5, Difference Engine No. 1
on “Recording and visualising the 20k system calls it takes to "import seaborn"” ↗…the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. – Charles Babbage in Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)
on “Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers (1953) [video]” ↗…well as all those quantities which have arisen from the result of other operations, are placed. 2nd. The mill into which the quantities about to be operated upon are always brought. - Charles Babbage, Passages from the life of a philosopher.
on “Programming Patterns: The Story of the Jacquard Loom” ↗