News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Manchester Baby was the first stored-program computer. Parent comment

Re:The Manchester Baby was the first stored-program computer by rootbear on Friday June 22, 2018 @08:41AM (#17373484)
Using a unified memory allowed for self modifying code. That's not something we do now, but those early machines had extremely limited memory and every trick was needed just to get anything done.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Manchester Baby was the first stored-program computer by Squonk42 on Friday June 22, 2018 @09:00AM (#17373605)
It is not a "trick", it is one of the only possible ways to achieve Turing-completeness: code self-modification, conditional branches or extensive (exponential) computation (Zuse Z3).
[ Parent | on HN ]