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Pygmalion by David C. Smith

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Future of Coding

A romp through the field of computer programming, grapling with our history and wondering what should come next. A mix of deeply technical talk, philo 
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If you're anything like Ivan (oof, sorry), you've heard of Pygmalion but never caught more than the gist. Some sort of project from the early 70s, similar to Sketchpad or Smalltalk or something, yet another promising prototype from the early history of our field that failed to take the world by storm. Our stock-in-trade on this show.

But you've probably heard of Programming by Demonstration. And you've certainly heard of icons — you know, those little pictures that have become indelibly part of computing as we know it. Pygmalion is the originator of these concepts… and more!

The best introduction to Pygmalion is Mariano Guerra's No-code History: Pygmalion, which includes a clearly articulated summary of the big ideas, motivation, and design, with a video demonstration of the programming interface, key terminology, and links.

The most introduction to Pygmalion — or Pig Million, The Millionth Pig, as it'll surely come to be known — is the subject of today's episode: the original paper by David Canfield Smith.

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See you in the future!

https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/072

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Future of Coding

An imaginative, ruminative romp through the land of poisoned sand. What even are computers, where di 
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