News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Ask HN: Why Are Conditionals Important?.

Re:Ask HN: Why Are Conditionals Important? by AnimalMuppet on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @12:28PM (#20748815)
Most computer programs are, in practice, difference amplifiers. Conditionals are how they achieve that.

("Most" because you have programs like image classifiers that are trying to be similarity amplifiers. That turns out to be hard to do with the standard building blocks, which want to be difference amplifiers. Perhaps different building blocks would be more useful.)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Why Are Conditionals Important? by q_eng_anon on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @12:54PM (#20749141)
thought you were going to tie it back into transistors for a second there... difference amplifiers are, after all, one of the simplest circuits out there. Not so sure about similarity amplifiers
[ Parent | on HN ]