I have read somewhere recently something related to the kind of computers. The reading was related to Lisp and Emacs that fit into an "architectural" model more like a Turing Machine. In the other hand it was C and the "other" architectural model was named after someone whose name I don't remember, but named as the most successful type...
Brian's premise in his argument to the question "Are side effects a good thing?" is interesting: computers are von-Neumann machines that are designed to work well with effects (rather than being designed to work well with lambdas) I am confused by the juxtaposition of the approaches. I cannot see them as black and white. What is th...
First some background (based on my understanding).. The Von-Neumann architecture describes the stored-program computer where instructions and data are stored in memory and the machine works by changing it's internal state, i.e an instruction operates on some data and modifies the data. So inherently, there is state maintained in the sys...
Why did non-von Neumann languages never became mainstream? ...
If you take the original Turing machine definition as follows: ...an infinite memory capacity obtained in the form of an infinite tape marked out into squares, on each of which a symbol could be printed. At any moment there is one symbol in the machine; it is called the scanned symbol. The machine can alter ...
I have used and like the Atmel ATMEGA and ATTINY series microcontrollers, and think them quite good. One thing I am not terribly fond of though is the fact that they (and Microchip PIC uC family also) are all Harvard machines, meaning I can't really put external memory to use or execute out of RAM, only the flash. While there are obviou...