Computer Science History

Discussions focus on early pioneers, classic papers, and origins of key concepts in computing, often debating attributions to figures like von Neumann, Shannon, McCarthy, Babbage, and others.

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20
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5
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Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
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2008
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2009
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2010
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2011
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2012
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2013
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2014
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2015
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2016
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2017
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2018
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2019
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2020
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2021
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2022
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2023
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2026
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Keywords

McCulloch spinroot.com youtube.com wordpress.com FRP MIT HAKMEM McCarthy AI BCE paper claude theory wrote mathematical computer john logic invented intelligence

Sample Comments

photon_collider Dec 28, 2023 View on HN

Probably John von Neumann: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

di4na Nov 25, 2016 View on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13036663I answered here. I linked the paper by McCarthy at the end.

jph Feb 5, 2021 View on HN

MIT is publishing a book that collects these classic papers:Prior Analytics (∼350 BCE) By AristotleThe True Method (1677) By Gottfried Wilhelm LeibnizSketch of the Analytical Engine (1843) By L. F. Menabrea, with Notes by the Translator, Ada Augusta, Countess of LovelaceAn Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which Are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities (1854) By George BooleMathematical Problems (1900) By David HilbertOn Computable Numbers, with an

hedgehog Dec 5, 2025 View on HN

I hate to break it to you but the original work on that topic was by Schmidhuber & Schmidhuber back in 1963.

marktangotango Jun 18, 2021 View on HN

Hello Professor, I was not familiar with you or your work and leave this here for anyone who's similarly uninformed:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Hewitt

arthurcolle Jan 30, 2021 View on HN

+1 for the Charles Babbage reference

tripzilch Apr 20, 2021 View on HN

Some research by none other than Claude Shannon :)

djmips Dec 20, 2022 View on HN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAKMEM contains some early history but probably not complete. These type of things get re-invented a lot.

vismit2000 Jun 13, 2025 View on HN

Claude Shannon: https://thebitplayer.com/

partycoder Dec 14, 2016 View on HN

Probably you might be referring to McCulloch and Pitts.