Today when you ask Alexa (Amazon’s Voice Assistant), Gives Instant Advice! Now Computer Can Understand Human Language! Can You Imagine the Challenge of Developing First Few Components of Compiler (Making Computer Understand Software Program Written by Human), way back 1963? Yes, it is all done by Dr. Aho (79) and Dr. Ullman (78) of Princeton University! Won 2020 A.M. Turing Award, deemed to be equivalent of the “Nobel Prize” of computing!! Read this Inspiring News!!

Dear Friends and Students

Today morning I received a WhatsApp message from Prof. V.Valli Kumari (Andhra University, Dept of CSE) regarding Turing Award for Dr.Aho and Dr. Ullman. I could not able to leave the message as general WhatsApp reading stock. The reason is simple, but Read this issue!

A couple of days back, my daughter asked for clarification. She is a beginner in Programming: Learnt Python first and now Learning C (ideally it should be another way round)! She is working on a problem where some data to be stored and sorted (in C programming, storing place is called Array). Just to give you the perspective, the gift offered by Dr.Aho and Dr. Ullman to the computing world, please read the following code (don’t worry even if you don’t understand programming language, I am sure you can manage!! Trust Me…Please don’t stop reading from now).

Python (to sort elements in an Array- In Python, Array is called as List, similar to English Language List of Elements)

# Python Code to declare a List of Floating point numbers

decimalnumber = [2.01, 2.00, 3.67, 3.28, 1.68]

 # Python Code to Sort list of Floating point numbers

decimalnumber.sort()

So Simple!! Numbers are sorted in the list: [1.68, 2.00, 2.01, 3.28, 3.67]

if I have to achieve the same sorting in C Programming, see the complexity of the code

for (i = 0; i < n; ++i)

 {

   for (j = i + 1; j < n; ++j)

   {

     if (decimalnumber [i] > decimalnumber [j])

     {

       a = decimalnumber[i];

       decimalnumber[i] = decimalnumber[j];

       decimalnumber[j] = a;

      }

    }

 }

Python is achieving the sorting with 1 single function (sort()), whereas I need to write 6-8 lines of code in C.

The industry is inviting more and more user-friendly, high level and high productive languages like Python. It is all achieved through powerful compilers and interpreters so that Machines can understand human understanding programming language. This foundation is done by Dr.Aho and Dr. Ullman. Now I am sure you would appreciate their work and why they were chosen for Turing Award, often called the Nobel Prize of Computing, which comes with a $1 million prize!!

Aho and Ullman began working together at Bell Labs in 1967. Even when Ullman began a career in academia in 1969 while Dr.Aho remained at Bell Labs. Later, Dr.Aho joined the department of computer science at Columbia in 1995 (www.eurekalert.org). They together wrote influential textbooks: “The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms” (1974) and “Principles of Compiler Design” (1977). Now, Dr. Ullman is a professor emeritus at Stanford University, also instrumental in developing the languages and concepts that drive databases.

Congratulations Dr. Ullman and Dr.Aho!! We all are enjoying the fruits of your Compiler Work!!

Your Well-wisher

Ravi Saripalle

Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)

Source Inspiration: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/technology/turing-award-aho-ullman.html