Hacker News Highlights, the Alan Kay Edition
This was already useful with him saying that Barton was a brilliant engineer. I have one paper with his name on it, sent by pjmlp, that describes his design of modern computing:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.scribd.com&#x2F;doc&#x2F;61812037&#x2F;Barton-B5000" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.scribd.com&#x2F;doc&#x2F;61812037&#x2F;Barton-B5000</a><p>He describes need for ALGOL-like programming languages, how they&#x27;ll be implemented, training people, and early notions of hardware&#x2F;software co-design. Also, touches on various aspects of ALGOL that could be turned into a CPU. Later, helps design and build one that&#x27;s essentially the first, business mainframe plus the first of mostly-safe, truly-engineered computers.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smecc.org&#x2F;The Architecture  of the Burroughs B-5000.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smecc.org&#x2F;The Architecture  of the Burr...</a><p>Later, another Burroughs guy, Anderson, uses similar engineering mindset invents INFOSEC per Roger Schell who expanded on his work. Another hired by Intel puts the MMU and segments in there to give security developers a chance. All may ultimately trace to Barton&#x27;s work and framework for thinking about machines from high-level to hardware. Worth highlighting and becoming more clear thanks to Kay&#x27;s little remark that tells me who brains of operation probably was among many author&#x27;s names I see in various places.<p>Has Wikipedia page it turns out:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Robert_S._Barton" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Robert_S._Barton</a><p>Note: Reading this, he <i>may</i> be the inventor of practical, abstract machines as computing solutions. He also taught lots of success stories in industry. Wonder what else he would&#x27;ve done if he stayed in industry.