Ask HN：計算領域有哪些被遺忘、值得重新探索的課題？

Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deserve a new revisit? 22 points by draxen4 hours ago | hide | past | favorite | 18 comments I mean both things that are enabled by AI coding agents but also things we couldn't do because computers weren't fast enough in the past. help romesmoke7 minutes ago | next[–] It is well past due time to revisit memory allocation from first principles. I recently finished my PhD on the topic, and realized that we have yet to agree on a consistent definition of fragmentation (see Wilson et al's seminal survey on "Dynamic Storage Allocation"), much less how to deal with it. When I was in the trenches, I had constant cognitive dissonance against the fact that (i) "it's a solved problem" and (ii) low-to-no-malloc was often presented as a feature of low-level code. My take is, train a SOTA deep learning system on solved static memory allocation instances (which is NP-complete already) and build a dynamic malloc on top. To see where the static SOTA was a couple years ago, see this: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.04874 And also my general audience-friendly presentation of it: https://cappadokes.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/07/16/welcom... Disclaimer: I've moved on past academia and I may have missed one or two breakthroughs. But the older the problem, the higher the probability of it staying open. reply chubot8 minutes ago | prev | next[–] Operating system design, and distributed operating system design (k8s falls well short of a distributed OS; it’s more like a toolkit that does the compute part) reply muzani15 minutes ago | prev | next[–] Evolutionary programming. Very suited to goals and agentic stuff. I'd be surprised if it's not yet in production somewhere. Procedurally generated content is also a lot more interesting. Without structure, you get slop. You can set the beginning of a story and an ending, as well as a story contour. Then procedurally generate content that ends at these points, even if they seem to veer away. Metaprogramming for similar reasons, things like writing scripts/languages for very specific problems. There's good techniques for all these, but the ROI was too low compared to the returns. It was difficult to write tests for the output space, but now it's a lot simpler. reply qtqtqt2 hours ago | prev | next[–] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloot_Digital_Coding_System reply y-curious51 minutes ago | prev | next[–] Languages not made for people that are optimized for tuned LLMs reply zamalek28 minutes ago | parent | next[–] What year does this forgotten concept come from, the 80s? reply iamdamian2 hours ago | prev | next[–] Plan 9 was cool. reply krapp2 hours ago | parent | next[–] The plan involving the raising of the dead? reply FDEUp1 hour ago | prev | next[–] Computer Lib / Dream Machines Xanadu reply rramadass1 hour ago | prev | next[–] All types of unconventional/exotic computing. I think this has been criminally neglected ever since the ascendancy of the von neumann architecture digital computer. 1) The Zen of Exotic Computing by Peter Kogge - https://epubs.siam.org/doi/10.1137/1.9781611977295 2) Handbook Of Unconventional Computing in 2-vols (Vol1-Theory, Vol2- Implementations) by Andrew Adamatzky et al. - https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/12232#... reply gulugawa2 hours ago | prev | next[–] Coding without LLM AI. reply jackb40402 hours ago | prev | next[–] Lisp Machines. And if you're a real freak, Forth Machines reply lyuhdev41 minutes ago | parent | next[–] I wonder if there are any modern languages that would be particularly interesting to make specific hardware for. The only example I know of is the one that runs Java bytecode. reply mannyv2 hours ago | prev | next[–] Analog computing reply nwhnwh1 hour ago | prev | next[–] Love reply soon_to_be_sb1 hour ago | prev | next[–] How about giving a shit about efficiency? reply vrighter1 hour ago | prev | next[–] what fast and performant really means. reply thakoppno2 hours ago | prev[–] tech debt reply Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact Search: