A Quote by Peter Norvig

Pascal and C are special-purpose languages for manipulating the registers and memory of a von Neumann-style computer.

Peter Norvig

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Computer Languages Memory Pascal Purpose Special Style Von Von Neumann

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Peter Norvig
American - Scientist
Born: December 14, 1956

Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."

John Backus

There was a seminar for advanced students in Zürich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. Von Neumann didn't say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann.

George Polya

John von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a result of von Neumann's advice. It's made me a very happy man ever since. But it was von Neumann who put the seed in that grew into my active irresponsibility!

Richard P. Feynman

I see a bright future for the biotechnology industry when it follows the path of the computer industry, the path that von Neumann failed to foresee, becoming small and domesticated rather than big and centralized.

Freeman Dyson

My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.' When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, 'You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.'

Claude Shannon

The most spectacular thing about Johnny [von Neumann] was not his power as a mathematician, which was great, or his insight and his clarity, but his rapidity; he was very, very fast. And like the modern computer, which no longer bothers to retrieve the logarithm of 11 from its memory (but, instead, computes the logarithm of 11 each time it is needed), Johnny didn't bother to remember things. He computed them. You asked him a question, and if he didn't know the answer, he thought for three seconds and would produce and answer.

Paul Halmos

John von Neumann was the only student I was ever afraid of.

George Polya

There are two kinds of people in the world: Johnny Von Neumann and the rest of us.

Eugene Wigner

... The approach of von Neumann and Connes to the use of non-commutative algebra in physics is naive, the situation is much more complicated.

Israel Gelfand

The purpose of most computer languages is to lengthen your resume by a word and a comma.

Larry Wall

I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, 'with four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.'

Enrico Fermi

Use "entropy" and you can never lose a debate, von Neumann told Shannon - because no one really knows what "entropy" is.

William Poundstone

He [John von Neumann] had the invaluable faculty of being able to take the most difficult problem and separate it into its components, whereupon everything looked brlliantly simple.

Stanislaw Ulam

Robert von Neumann taught painting, and when I finally got into a painting class of his, he reacted in much the same way.

Warren MacKenzie

Running overtime is the one unforgivable error a lecturer can make. After fifty minutes (one microcentury as von Neumann used to say) everybody's attention will turn elsewhere.

Gian-Carlo Rota

If you didn't know what you were trying to do, [Robert von Neumann] wouldn't say a word. He would just turn and walk away. So you very quickly learned to think that you'd better be attempting to do something in that painting class.

Warren MacKenzie

A Quote by Peter Norvig

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