Steve,
C is a wonderful thing and still runs the world, don't give up hope!
If it is any consolation, Prolog warped my fragile mind and ML hurt my
feelings.
Ah Brooklyn, life was simpler then ....
-Birch
--
"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and
that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
-- Stephen Hawking
**** Use of advanced messaging technology does not imply ****
***** an endorsement of western industrial civilization *****
On Sep 7, 2009, at 5:27 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
Birch -
I thought Container as well (although Bag leapt to mind too) but
Russ decided against so all that was left was the more abstract
descriptor. Besides, LISP has a data structure or two and
underlying types, loosely defined but they are there - IMHO "Data
Structure" is neither procedural, declarative, nor functional.
Of course.
I merely have my face being rubbed in this right now cuz I'm the old-
school C programmer working with some new-school C++ kids who don't
really even know what a Struct is... They will create a Class when
a Struct is what they really need.
Since I grew up in the early days of Knuth's Art of Computer
Programming (when you were still in a Brooklyn grammar school
beating up honor-roll students for their lunch money)... I tend to
the Procedural view of things... I learned all the Applicative and
Object Oriented and Concatenative ( In my NeWS days) languages
offered up to me in the g(l)ory days. I have loved my Snobol and
APL and Prolog and PostScript (*as a programming language!*) and
Objective C and Java and loved to hate LISP and Haskell and Simula,
and made peace with C++, but at heart, I love the half-step of
abstraction from hardware that good ole C provides. It's a goddamn
bit processing machine, gimme some register variables and an easy
way to do bit-shifts and I'll build the rest from raw stock!
Of course due to my current work situation I am drawn to "bring me
a rock" like a moth to the flame.
Does this mean you are avoiding deadlines? Or just so morbidly
fascinated with all things work-related that answering enelucidable
riddles is like mother's milk?
I have a bottle of Irish Whiskey to replenish yours and Bourbon is
always good (rot gut or not) but you know that I can't condone
burning books for any reason!
Yes, I believe we did do some damage to a bottle of Jamesons last
time you were over. And I don't need you to condone the burning of
books, but that doesn't mean you can't warm your hands by the
woodstove while *I* do. The real sin would be to use good whiskey
as an accellerant (for the combustion, not the attitude).
-Birch
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
