You might all know of Gerald as the author of SICP(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs).
This is a speech he gave at Dan Friedman's 60th birthday: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2726904509434151616&hl=en It seems more or less similar to the speech he gave at the dynamic language symposium in OOPSLA 2005, which I attended. The title was "Why programming is a good medium for expressing poorly understood and sloppily formulated ideas" It reminded me of Iverson's Turing award lecture. A quote I took while I was at his speech : Programming forces one to be precise and formal, without being excessively rigorous. Gerald showed the audience, for instance, how digital circuit analysis could be effectively taught and discussed about through Scheme as the media for teaching and thinking. What Gerald Sussman said in the keynote speech was, people usually explain their procedural knowledge in the way that's easier to explain rather than that closely reflects what/how they do it. He said, the way most digital circuit textbooks explain on how to do the analysis is very different from the real professionals do, and even the professors teach the textbook-way while he uses his own way when thinking by himself. I believe disciplining in thinking and writing in programming languages like J helped me get enlightened on how powerful a programming language can be at learning a new procedural knowledge, understanding and communicating my previous knowledge, and representing and manipulating that knowledge. Moreover, I came to appreciate the great power of good notation, and I now use notation as a tool of thinking intentionally(sometimes I invent it). Abstract of his speech : http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1094855.1094860 Marvin Minsky's original paper(of the oopsla 2005 speech title) : http://rafael_es_son.typepad.com/metainformaciones/files/minsky_essay_1967.pdf ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
