Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 22:17 7-3-2003 -0600, Julia Thompson wrote: G. D. Akin wrote: Ronn!Blankenship wrote: There was a short-lived movement to replace the GOTO with a new statement, COMEFROM, but for some reason it never caught on . . . I have a copy of the COMEFROM article somewhere. If I can find it, I get it to you. Are we allowed to send attachments on this list? The list server will eat attachments. If you can cut paste, that'll work. Otherwise, if you can get it up onto a website and post the URL, that'll work. Nowadays there is a Download page on www.brin-l.com. George, if you send me the article I'll be more than happy to make it available from there. Jeroen Architectus Websiticum van Baardwijk _ Wonderful-World-of-Brin-L Website: http://www.Brin-L.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
On Thu Mar 6 18:04:31 PST 2003, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 01:45 AM 3/4/03 -0500, Han Tacoma wrote: On Sun, 2 Mar 2003 19:35:29 -0800 Nick Arnett wrote: [...snip...] mistaken and by that time I had already left IBM with my early retirement package and was learning a new life in a wheelchair -- fell out of a tree and broke my back (don't ask what I was doing in a tree :-) Deer hunting, perhaps? Cutting branches before taking the tractor to it to keep it from falling into the farmhouse. And, as several other people have already said: Oh, by the way, welcome to the list! Thanks. -- Han Tacoma ~ Artificial Intelligence is better than none! ~ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 09:40 PM 3/2/03 -0500, Han Tacoma wrote: Let me not forget punch machines (024, 026 -- actually printed the contents of the card on top of the card, 029 -- a bit more modern) and there used to be rooms filled with these machines -- usually 10 - 100, depending on the size of the business. This was where all paper was transcribed to data cards. The 029 had a tiny microswitch which would shut off the card feed when the output hopper was full, unlike the 026 which had a regular-size toggle switch that was positioned at the top of the output hopper so it would trip when the hopper was full and shut off the card feed. A small piece of ordinary Scotch tape was sufficient to hold down the microswitch and prevent the blank cards from feeding, and if you recall when they used to advertise it as Scotch invisible tape, in this use it pretty well was . . . Hours Of Fun For The Practical Joker Maru -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 09:40 PM 3/2/03 -0500, Han Tacoma wrote: Computers, ...OK my first machine was a 1401 and it had 4K of memory, that's right, only 4K. My first was an 1130 which had been upgraded from the basic model to have 8K of core memory¹, which meant the most precision I was ever able to coax out of it when computing numbers to ridiculous numbers of decimal places was about 7500 digits (using software which stored 4 digits in a word), and about the biggest matrices I could get it to compute with were 25x25 with the entries in extended precision. _ ¹When you perform the necessary conversion from 16-bit words to bytes, my HP-48 came with 8 times as much memory . . . and it does all its calculations to 12 significant figures, while even extended precision on the 1130 was only 9 digits. And it fits in your pocket . . . okay, your coat pocket. -- Ronn! :) I. B. M. U. B. M. We all B. M. For I. B. M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 08:21 PM 3/4/03 +0900, G. D. Akin wrote: - Original Message - From: Horn, John [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 1:52 PM Subject: RE: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy Movie So undtrack?] From: Jose J. Ortiz-Carlo [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] And speaking of languages, is it me, or is BASIC making a comeback of sorts? There's nothing wrong with Basic, just a bad choice of names. Especially Basic that has all the control structures to allow full structured programming and modern programming techniques. Which VB certainly does. Perhaps you should have said BASIC now has all the control structures . . . In my first programming course, in BASIC, we had to simulate control structures with the controlled use of IF ... GOTO. Several years ago, I had occasion to work on a by-then-already-rather-old Kaypro 10, which had a language called S-BASIC, which stood for Structured BASIC. It was sort of a hybrid of BASIC and PASCAL. Frex, at the beginning of a program, you had to declare the types of all the variables, and it had many of the control structures (DO ... WHILE, REPEAT ... UNTIL, etc.) in addition to all the traditional BASIC stuff. IIRC they also had a C-BASIC which was more of a traditional version of BASIC (but it lacked some of the other features I needed, so I didn't use it as much as the S-BASIC). -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 06:47 PM 3/4/03 -0600, Reggie Bautista wrote: George wrote: In my first programming course, in BASIC, we had to simulate control structures with the controlled use of IF ... GOTO. Ahh, GOTO. I remember what a big deal it was when they installed a new version of BASIC at the high school I was attending at the time, and it had two brand new commands (new for us, anyway); GOSUB and RETURN. The programming teachers immediately banned use of GOTO altogether. In retrospect, the days of GOTO seem like the dark ages of programming ;-) There was a short-lived movement to replace the GOTO with a new statement, COMEFROM, but for some reason it never caught on . . . -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 05:26 PM 3/5/03 -0600, Horn, John wrote: From: Jose J. Ortiz-Carlo [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] I remember clearly how much of a big NONO our programming teachers made with GOTO as well. Anybody remember the term spaghetti code? When they banned GOTO, I showed 'em! I changed all my code to just say GO! Then in languages like COBOL where you could use alphanumeric labels, there was the obvious label for the target of a GOTO statement . . . -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 01:45 4-3-2003 -0500, Han Tacoma wrote: There's hardly a machine or acronym there that isn't familiar to me... but I should note that I was 9 years old in 1965. How'd you get to know all those numbers and acronyms? I think that over the years he built up a database of all computer-related abbreviations, acronyms, brand names etcetera, and then wrote a script that picks them randomly and inserts them into his posts. You know, just to impress us with his vast knowledge... :-) Are you from Groningen?, because my ancestors would have been neighbours from Friesland. Nope, I'm from Noord-Brabant -- one of the southern provinces (Groningen and Friesland are all the way up north, for those among us who are Dutch-geographically challenged). Jeroen You ain't much if you ain't Dutch van Baardwijk _ Wonderful-World-of-Brin-L Website: http://www.Brin-L.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
Nick Arnett wrote back on Tue Mar 4 07:12:55 PST 2003 should note that I was 9 years old in 1965. . How'd you get to know all those numbers and acronyms? I think my life was programmed for computers. he, he happens to some. When I was 10 or 11, I was part of a project by some Carnegie-Mellon graduate students doing a thesis on the question of whether or not kids could learn to program computers. It's sort of strange to think that was once a mystery. So the work done at MIT with LOGO -- Seymour Papert (Piaget), was post your era? BTW, I don't recall having seen any mention to LOGO during this programming language thread, ...and it is a very deep language. From MIT Press: Computer Science Logo Style 2/e - 3 vol. set Brian Harvey Volume 1: Symbolic Computing Volume 2: Advanced Techniques Volume 3: Beyond Programming http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=7C7028DA-FB05-47EB-87EA -CFD7F42962BBttype=2tid=3987 (cut and paste as necessary please, if the the line is broken) Afterwards, I continued to hang out at CMU's math [...snip...] Wow, I'm impressed!, must have been a hoot working with Tim Berners-Lee. What great experiences! I never made it through formal college/university. IBM picked me up when I was 16 (finished high school at night) and all subsequent training was by them or self. Aspect-oriented programming seems to be the latest... I think you're talking about an addition to Smalltalk, Apostle, AspectJ? Wasn't the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) -- aka Xerox doing some of the work? I don't have any URL's handy but I guess a Google whould show some. PARC seems to be the thought leader. I bumped into it via AspectJ (http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/), an IBM Java effort in that direction. I'm still absorbing the idea. More at http://aosd.net/ I found my URL, to work done at the University of British Columbia, http://www.cs.ubc.ca/labs/spl/projects/apostle/ for Apostle. I'm currently getting back to some of MIT's Jay Forrester work in System Dynamics. I am using VENSIM (http://www.vensim.com/new.html) Donnela Meadows is somewhat of a hero to me, too bad she had to go. Her book The Limits to Growth, 1972 is when I started looking at this and _discovered_ Systems Thinking :-) Before she passed away, she had a column in The Global Citizen http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/meadows/default.htm ...I think by now I'm going OT, but here's a shameless plug to The Miniature Earth as well. http://www.thesustainablevillage.com/miniature_earth/miniature_earth.htm Cheers! -- Han Tacoma ~ Artificial Intelligence is better than none! ~ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of J. van Baardwijk ... I think that over the years he built up a database of all computer-related abbreviations, acronyms, brand names etcetera, and then wrote a script that picks them randomly and inserts them into his posts. You know, just to impress us with his vast knowledge... :-) Oddly enough, I *am* working on something like that. A lot like that. Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Han Tacoma ... So the work done at MIT with LOGO -- Seymour Papert (Piaget), was post your era? *Much* later. That was in the late 70s. BTW, I don't recall having seen any mention to LOGO during this programming language thread, ...and it is a very deep language. But I think it may make a person drowsy. (Papert sat next to me at a Media Lab anniversary event and promptly snoozed off.) Wow, I'm impressed!, must have been a hoot working with Tim Berners-Lee. What great experiences! TBL is a very fine person. I miss talking regularly to him; his ideas about the semantic web fascinate me. Somewhere on a brin-l page is a lousy picture of us inside Paris city hall. At the time, it hadn't really dawned on me how important his invention was. But I must have suspected, since I virtually never bother to get my picture taken with anyone, and sometimes regret it later. I never made it through formal college/university. IBM picked me up when I was 16 (finished high school at night) and all subsequent training was by them or self. I might have been happier that way. Aspect-oriented programming seems to be the latest... I think you're talking about an addition to Smalltalk, Apostle, AspectJ? Wasn't the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) -- aka Xerox doing some of the work? I don't have any URL's handy but I guess a Google whould show some. PARC seems to be the thought leader. I bumped into it via AspectJ (http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/), an IBM Java effort in that direction. I'm still absorbing the idea. More at http://aosd.net/ I found my URL, to work done at the University of British Columbia, http://www.cs.ubc.ca/labs/spl/projects/apostle/ for Apostle. I'm currently getting back to some of MIT's Jay Forrester work in System Dynamics. I am using VENSIM (http://www.vensim.com/new.html) A bit far from my life, but I do make heavy use of databases. Other stuff I create and develop has to do with web, mail and newsgroup robots, content analysis, heavy statistical stuff like clustering, link analysis, MDS... And I'm growing quite intrigued by the possibilities for Topic Maps (http://www.topicmaps.org/). Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 15:30 1-3-2003 -0500, Han Tacoma wrote: Just joined the list and got caught up in this thread, nostalgia suddenly waking up in me. Hello to you too, and welcome on board! :-) Care to tell us a bit more about you? You know, getting to know you and stuff like that. :-) In return, we will let you find out more about this community; there are a few pretty good websites about it. Make sure to check out: www.brin-l.com (shamelessly plugging my own website here! GRIN ) www.brin-l.org (which points to the Brin-L section of Steve Sloan's website www.sloan3d.com) Oh, and don't forget our namesake's website, www.davidbrin.com . All that should give you some idea of what you're getting yourself into... GRIN Jeroen Welcoming Committee van Baardwijk _ Wonderful-World-of-Brin-L Website: http://www.Brin-L.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
be forewarned, this may be considered long, or very long by some _ Jose J. Ortiz-Carlo on Sun Mar 2 00:30:26 PST 2003 wrote: Welcome aboard. Have fun!! :) Thanks for the welcome Jose, muchas gracias. Krajo que este sitio es bien activo :-) _ J. van Baardwijk on Sun Mar 2 16:28:56 PST 2003 wrote: Hello to you too, and welcome on board! :-) Care to tell us a bit more about you? You know, getting to know you and stuff like that. :-) [...snip part of message...] All that should give you some idea of what you're getting yourself into... GRIN Thanks to you too Jeroen, heel hartelijk bedankt. Deze plaats is verdommed bezig! duui! BTW, I did check out the websites you gave me, pretty cool! I will go back. _ I'm having a hell of a time keeping up with just this thread, but one of the best posts I saw was by The Fool on Wed Feb 26 21:15:34 PST 2003 when he wrote a most amusing description of most languages, it's a keeper! If I ever make to Norfolk (unless he's in some other city), I'll have to give him a call. _ Now to answer Jeroen's request. I did start off wiring control panels when machines were still called hard iron, they had crankshafts, relays, the printing mechanism was typebars that lifted up and down and stopped when the character read through a punched card read by brushes making contact with a copper roller. The old saying about you dropping a tray of cards really screwed up your day was true because you would have had to sort the cards and seaprate them into different groups, i.e., master card -- contains name and address, balance card -- contains your previous day's bank balance and detail cards -- the checks and or deposits you made during the day. So we had a sorter (082, 083, 084 -- each more sofisticaded and faster than the previos one), it's function is self-evident. We had a collator (077) where you had two (2) hoppers -- where you put cards in. So one hopper would have the master cards and the other would have the balance card and what the machine would do is place the master card ahead of the balance card. So far it sounds easy enough but consider, sometimes the amount of information for a master card would span the 80 columns available so you would have two (2) master cards that had to go ahead of the balance card. Then you placed the merged cards into one hopper and the detail cards into the other so that in the end you would have name, balance and daily transactions in sequence ready to go to the tabulator. getting bored by now? I hope not, this _is_ history! The tabulator (402, 407, 421, etc.) were machines that took these merged cards and actually printed invoices, bank statements, and et al. business accounting systems. They were usually connected to a reproducing punch (514, 519) machine by a huge cable about 2 in. thick and punched the new balance card for use the next evening. They were also used of course to reproduce cards whenever they would wear out. There were calculators (602 -- completely mechanical, 604 -- had tubes) that would read a card and perform i.e. interest calculations and punch the result on the same card. Let me not forget punch machines (024, 026 -- actually printed the contents of the card on top of the card, 029 -- a bit more modern) and there used to be rooms filled with these machines -- usually 10 - 100, depending on the size of the business. This was where all paper was transcribed to data cards. I hope you're still with me, although they didn't know it then they were already subjected to something similar to Moore's Law -- this is 1965 I'm describing, that's when I started repairing the dastardly things. Imagine a bug on one of these things could actually be a rat that had gotten caught in the gears of the machine Computers, ...OK my first machine was a 1401 and it had 4K of memory, that's right, only 4K. That's where we ran Accounts Payable, A/R, Payroll and all accounting functions. These machines had the doughnut core for memory and while learning to program them, we actually did map out memory into segments where data was going to be stored and the areas where the instructions were going to be placed. Even today each byte has an associated address. These machines also came with -- oooh joy -- three (3) index registers. Then they made Autocoder available (pretty much the same as Assembler) and that made the programming job a whole lot easier. Remember there was no operating system, so you had to write your own I/O routines and the Channel Commands associated (peripherals had a whole different set of instructions and still do.) 1440 and 1410 were other machines using the same architecture and the 70x, 70xx, were a different breed made for
RE: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Han Tacoma ... Became a Systems Engineer, Sales Rep., Product Planner for SQL/DS, worked with early natural language, knowledge based system products, and then retired from IBM (in South America, Caribeean, Europe, USA and Canada) Did you have anything to do with InfoMarket, cryptolopes, etc.? There's hardly a machine or acronym there that isn't familiar to me... but I should note that I was 9 years old in 1965. We could not say that Relational Databases are better than Hierarchical databases -- IMS served it's purpose very well when System R was still under development in California. How about Record I/O, which was what DEC called databases in the early 70s? Or were you forbidden to touch such devices as the PDP-8? Object Oriented programming has now been overshadowed by other paradigms and this only confirms that old adage the only constant in the universe is change. Aspect-oriented programming seems to be the latest... Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
Hello, I'll focus on Getting to know you. Just joined the list and got caught up in this thread, nostalgia suddenly waking up in me. At 06:19 PM 2/28/03 +0900, G. D. Akin wrote: Ronn!: wrote Since this seems to have turned into post your resume: Note really post your resume, but Getting to know you. The languages -- all of the above, in fact I go back (dating myself now :-) to the days of 1401/1440 Autocoder, Fargo and machine language, ie. you map your storage on a piece of paper and start writing the number equivalent of the instruction set to manipulate logic, I/O and data areas. All pre-operating system days. Also go back a little further when you actually had to wire control panels for tabulators, collators, reproducing, and calculating machines like 401/421, 077/088, 514, 602, 604. All these references are to IBM product line. Maybe we should open up a thread Getting to know you? Cheers! -- Han Tacoma ~ Artificial Intelligence is better than none! ~ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
- Original Message - From: Han Tacoma [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2003 2:30 PM Subject: Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy Movie Soundtrack?] Han Tacoma ~ Artificial Intelligence is better than none! ~ I'll take natural stupidity over artificial intelligence any day. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 02:32 PM 2/26/03 +, William T Goodall wrote: I much prefer C to Pascal. Or Modula-2 or Ada or any of those other BD languages. BD? Imagining Whips And Chains In The Computer Room Maru -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 02:32 PM 2/26/03 +, William T Goodall wrote: Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons. - Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949 And the mouse will probably weigh no more than 80-100 pounds . . . -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 07:50 AM 2/27/03 -0800, Nick Arnett wrote: Java is also the most widely used programming language in the world. What the heck is so evil about it? For some, that is sufficient reason to consider it evil, just as M$ is considered evil because of its industry dominance. -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 06:19 PM 2/28/03 +0900, G. D. Akin wrote: Ronn!: wrote Since this seems to have turned into post your resume: Note really post your resume, but Getting to know you. Okay, here's the smiley that should have been there: ;-) -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 02:50 AM 3/1/03 +, Paul Walker wrote: On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 08:10:57PM -0600, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: BD? Imagining Whips And Chains In The Computer Room Maru Mm, kind of. http://www.jargonfile.com/jargon/html/entry/bondage-and-discipline-language.html I have learned my new term for today . . . And I See Their Point Maru -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 08:31 PM 2/28/03 -0500, Jim Sharkey wrote: Ronn!Blankenship wrote: Anyone want to comment here on APL? I was forced to take an APL course in college as part of NJIT's Statistics and Actuarial Science program at the time. I can't say that I remember much about it; it was an introductory course. I don't recall caring for it all that much. I seem to remember it was very...brief, for lack of a better word, at least compared to the other languages I had been exposed to, like Pascal, Fortran, and COBOL. Concise, is how I have heard it described. -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 10:19 PM 2/28/03 -0600, Reggie Bautista wrote: Nick wrote: Java is also the most widely used programming language in the world. What the heck is so evil about it? Ronn! replied: For some, that is sufficient reason to consider it evil, just as M$ is considered evil because of its industry dominance. Given the fact that Java was originally intended in part as a tool to break Micro$oft's dominance of the industry, the irony of that is just staggering... All I was saying is that some people are always going to criticize whoever's at the top simply because they are on top. -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 02:11 PM 3/1/03 +0900, G. D. Akin wrote: - Original Message - From: Ronn!Blankenship [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2003 12:25 PM Subject: Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy Movie Soundtrack?] At 08:31 PM 2/28/03 -0500, Jim Sharkey wrote: Ronn!Blankenship wrote: Anyone want to comment here on APL? I was forced to take an APL course in college as part of NJIT's Statistics and Actuarial Science program at the time. I can't say that I remember much about it; it was an introductory course. I don't recall caring for it all that much. I seem to remember it was very...brief, for lack of a better word, at least compared to the other languages I had been exposed to, like Pascal, Fortran, and COBOL. Concise, is how I have heard it described. Indecipherable. But that's part of its appeal: to be able to write a working program which on paper looks like what would result if a cat walked across the math department's secretary's typewriter keyboard while she had the Symbol ball installed, or at best a typical page out of Whitehead and Russell's _Principia Mathematica_. IOW, one that no one else could possibly understand . . . ;-) -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 05:24 PM 2/26/03 -0600, Dan Minette wrote: - Original Message - From: Reggie Bautista [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 5:13 PM Subject: Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/FantasyMovieSoundtrack?] David wrote (that's David H., I think): My impression is that C was designed for people who could not type rapidly. I agree, once you really know the syntax and all the commands, shorter is better. But one has to get to that point somehow! For instance, we could type English more rapidly if long words like 'impression' were replaced with shorter strings like '#2367'. But one does have to give some weight to the fact that the former is easier to remember than the latter. COBOL is crazy, since it uses English instead of the common math symbols. But Pascal is about right. Having easily deciphered command names soon pays for itself in less debugging--that is for everyone who does not place a high cost on typing a few extra characters. Kevin replied: What the heck is wrong with that? Add current-amount to balance-amount. Yeah that's just crazy! Kevin T. - VRWC just having fun Programming languages that use English-like commands make programs much easier to follow -- if you know English. Programming languages that are much more symbolic and less natural language oriented make programs that can more easily be interpreted by people who speak a variety of (non-programming) languages. Actually, programming languages with short commands are similar to mathematics with + - / and * signs. Would you expect math equations to use words? Anyone want to comment here on APL? -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 01:06 PM 2/26/03 -0600, Dan Minette wrote: - Original Message - From: Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 9:19 AM Subject: Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy Movie Soundtrack?] On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 02:51:48PM +, Jose J. Ortiz-Carlo wrote: You have to agree, though, that the *mother* of all incomprehensible programming languages has to be Assembly language. No, that would be *machine language*: i.e., actually having to program in 1s and 0s like they had to back in the really old days . . . No, I disagree, seriously. Assembly language was the easiest language I have learned. Tedious to use, but easy to understand. It followed what was going on in the CPU in a straightforward manner, little abstraction. Out of curiosity, have you ever tried to debug someone else's massive assembly code? From my experience, the ability to use C instead of assembly for all but a few functions cuts software efforts at least by half for massive projects. No, but when I worked for Novell I had to write a manual explaining all the various error codes one could get, which meant I got to read through all the C and assembly code for Novell NetWare 3.0 and figure out what was generating each error message and why and what you could do about it. (As with the M$ BSOD, sometimes the answer was Not much, or, in several cases, Contact your authorized NetWare tech support provider.) -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 08:01 PM 2/27/03 +0900, you wrote: I learned BASIC, COBOL, then Pascal and FORTRAN simultaneously, then PL/I and IBM 360 (yep, that long ago) Assembly Language. My favorite language is still Pascal though I have never seen it used outside the educational community. I once worked for a company where a fair amount of their software was originally written in Pascal. I have progammed over half a million lines of FORTRAN on a VAX 11/780 using DEC's Fortran-77 and a few thousand lines of VAX assembly. Okay, that's a few more than I've done on the same machine. I've taught college-level courses in BASIC, PASCAL, COBOL, FORTRAN, and PL/I. Since this seems to have turned into post your resume: I have taught at least BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, APL, and assembly language. Never taught Pascal, but I wrote a manual for it. Written a program or two or several in PL/I, Algol, LISP, RPG, and probably some others I have forgotten. In addition to some of the usual stuff (VB, VC++, assembler) and the Visual FORTRAN I've mentioned before, I have Smalltalk on this machine but I've yet to get around to doing anything with it . . . -- Ronn! :) Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space. (Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
Alberto Monteiro wrote: Jose J. Ortiz-Carlo wrote: If I have to choose between coding COBOL and coding RPG, I would much rather go for COBOL. What is RPG? I know two things that use this AFT, but none of them are computer languages. RPG is/was a programming language that grew out of a text processing application. It invovles column-specific commands (i.e. if col. 47 contains a 3, then do this... (as defined by the language). Later on in its lifecycle, the specs were expanded to allow for more robust programming than page breaks, subtotals, and other statistical computations while processing a data file. Not a fun language to program in, especially if you don't like putting tape on your monitor. Probably the closest current programming language match in function and style to RPG is Crystal Reports. I feel I can exercise a lot more control with a computer programming language that uses instructions that resemble natural language. This is your feeling, but not mine. I think a computer language that adds unnecessary symbols make it harder to understand what the code is doing. Properly formatted, languages with _less_ symbols are more clear. I like, for example, to compare C with Pascal. He's not talking about whether or not to include things such as articles, prefixes, suffixes in your syntax, he means being able to use syntax instead of format-specific switches. -- Matt ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
Jose J. Ortiz-Carlo wrote: From: Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] No, I disagree, seriously. Assembly language was the easiest language I have learned. Tedious to use, but easy to understand. It followed what was going on in the CPU in a straightforward manner, little abstraction. True, Assembler is a very powerful tool. To be able to track down what is going on inside whatever register or memory address at any given time is very convenient. But what I don't like about is how cumbersome it becomes after a while. This reminds me of an exchange I saw on the comp.arch newsgroup back in 1990, which I saved and still have, because to this day it still cracks me up. I've posted it to different places once or twice, but no one else seems to appreciate it as much as I do, but I'll give it a shot here... Anyway, the setup for this is that the first poster mistakenly writes .5k (500) for the number of transistors, instead of .5M (500,000). The next guy sees this and jokes about it, and the last guy takes it up as a challenge to design a 500 transistor CPU... (Also, for the transistor die size diagrams to look correct, you need to view it in a monospace font, like courier.) In article [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robert Minich) writes: by [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tiggr): The ARM is a good example of a RISC with very few transistors (core is .5k transistors). The reason is that its designers wanted it to be CHEAP. Wow, 500 transistors for the core. Must be one of those RidiculISC extremists. :-) Okay, the software engineers demand a 32 bit processor, and the bean counters give a 500 transistor budget. Overconstrained? Let's give it a try. A bit serial approach is selected. This results in meager instruction throughput, but makes possible an extremely high clock rate. Since most of your market believes computer horsepower is measured in MHz, sales will take off. The sluggish performance will have them back as repeat customers within a year. The serial adder with carry flip-flop is just a few dozen transistors. Data path multiplexers and logical instructions cost four transistors each. Special locations in main memory will substitute for operand registers. So far it looks like 500 will be easy. Unfortunately we need a full size memory address register to form those 32 bit addresses for the bloated software. A 32 bit instruction pointer probably requires a hardware register too, but we can economize by storing it on dynamic nodes next to the memory address register. The control section has a 6 bit counter to keep track of all those shifting microcycles. Instructions. Let's splurge and have four independent ones: ADD, NOR, STORE, and JMPNEG. One addressing mode: direct. The hardware will need just 2 bits of instruction register, and the rest of the instruction format can gate directly into the memory address register. Oops, that's looks like only 30 bits of word addressability. Here a byte, there a shift, and in come the orders for the commercial instruction set option. The customer's consultants must never see the raw hardware instruction set. Some of them would complain bitterly about having to teach the computer to subtract, multiply, and divide (probably because they don't remember how) and our machine could get an unfavorable reputation. Base level assembly language is verbose, convoluted and ugly. Wrap two layers of microcode around the machine to emulate a sophisticated instruction set. The first layer of microcode emulates arithmetic, stack, index registers, and memory mapping. Level 1 assembly language is concise and effective. The second layer of microcode implements call gates, virtual machines, capabilities, and something we can call object oriented. Level 2 assembly language is verbose, convoluted, and ugly, but the consultants would feel like members of a high priesthood. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] control-pla...n/a.100 est. Total Transistors..650 The design is running 30% over budget. The bean counter wants to compare die size against the competition to see if they have a cost advantage. i486 Die: ++ |..0000000000000...0.| |0##.| |.##0| |0##.| |.##0| |0##.| |.##0| |0##.|
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 07:49 AM 2/26/2003 -0500, you wrote: I feel I can exercise a lot more control with a computer programming language that uses instructions that resemble natural language. This is your feeling, but not mine. I think a computer language that adds unnecessary symbols make it harder to understand what the code is doing. Properly formatted, languages with _less_ symbols are more clear. I like, for example, to compare C with Pascal. Alberto Monteiro My impression is that C was designed for people who could not type rapidly. I agree, once you really know the syntax and all the commands, shorter is better. But one has to get to that point somehow! For instance, we could type English more rapidly if long words like 'impression' were replaced with shorter strings like '#2367'. But one does have to give some weight to the fact that the former is easier to remember than the latter. COBOL is crazy, since it uses English instead of the common math symbols. But Pascal is about right. Having easily deciphered command names soon pays for itself in less debugging--that is for everyone who does not place a high cost on typing a few extra characters. ---David What the heck is wrong with that? Add current-amount to balance-amount. Yeah that's just crazy! Kevin T. - VRWC just having fun ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Computer Languages [was: Your Favorite SciFi/Fantasy MovieSoundtrack?]
At 02:51 PM 2/26/2003 +, you wrote: From: William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 14:32:34 + When my wife was doing a two-year computing course she had to learn COBOL. I'd never used COBOL, and when I saw it I found it close to incomprehensible. You have to agree, though, that the *mother* of all incomprehensible programming languages has to be Assembly language. This discussion on programming languages brings back memories!! One of the final programming exercises for my Assembler class was developing a word processor in Assembly code for the IBM 4361. True, it was an interesting exercise in the sense that it helps develop logic and critical thinking skills, but giving birth to that baby was anything but a picinic. :) JJ I'll have to disagree with this. I've used Assembly language for three different systems. Once I learned it, the programming flew. And for me they were easy to learn. In fact I learned these way before I knew how a computer worked at the gate level. Once you put the two together, it was obvious. That's why I argued with someone* a while back over light computers. I didn't think they knew how a computer really works to just postulate that they will be the computing breakthrough that will use no energy and be faster. Kevin T. - VRWC *I know who ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
