> Crispin Rope concentrates on the power of ENIAC and its usefulness, neither > of which can be argued with, but to me a "computer" without self-modifying > code is a programmable calculator even if it has index registers...
As a total thread-drift, I have in my hand a machine that anyone would class as a a programmable calculator. It looks like a calcualtor, it has key-per-function operation (that is, a 'SIN' key, etc). And yet... Using totally documented instructions you can create a string containing the text of a program. You can then convert that string _into_ a program. And execute said program (as a subroutine of the program you are running that created the string and converted it to a program, in general). If that's not self-modifying code, I don't know what is... I refer of course to the excellent HP RPL machines. -tony
