From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <7359f0490909061103y78cfb3a4u8adf56d062e63695@mail.gmail.com> References: <7d3530220909050736h693c665ere5b8346c4569c7e1@mail.gmail.com> <3aaafc130909052123h2dacb56ck99d6a5302f972ae0@mail.gmail.com> <393394D0A7F3F4A227F94CDA@192.168.1.2> <7359f0490909061103y78cfb3a4u8adf56d062e63695@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 11:47:03 -0400 Message-ID: <3aaafc130909070847q2fc2de55w72486a262e6a2268@mail.gmail.com> From: "J.R. Mauro" To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [9fans] nice quote Topicbox-Message-UUID: 690b9efa-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Rob Pike wrote: >> Are you implying Doug McIlroy hadn't been taught about (and inevitably >> occupied by) Church-Turing Thesis or even before that Ackermann function= and >> had to wait to be inspired by a comment in passing about FORTRAN to real= ize >> the importance of recursion?! This was a rhetorical question, of course. > > Doug loves that story. In the version he told me, he was a (math) grad > student at MIT in 1956 (before FORTRAN) and the discussion in the lab > was about computer subroutines - in assembly or machine language of > course. =A0Someone mused about what might happen if a subroutine called > itself. =A0Everyone looked bemused. =A0The next day they all returned and > declared that they knew how to implement a subroutine that could call > itself although they had no idea what use it would be. =A0"Recursion" > was not a word in computing. =A0Hell, "computing" wasn't even much of a > word in math. It's nice to know that it's a bit of lore that changes with each telling. > > Don't be Whiggish in your understanding of history. =A0Its participants > did not know their way. > > -rob > >