[OT] - A hacker stole $31M of Ether — how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

See - 
https://medium.freecodecamp.org/a-hacker-stole-31m-of-ether-how-it-happened-and-what-it-means-for-ethereum-9e5dc29e33ce


A long read. Someone has stolen $31M of Ether.

Interesting quote near the end of the article:

In blockchain, code is intrinsically unrevertible. Once you 
deploy a bad smart contract, anyone is free to attack it as long 
and hard as they can, and there’s no way to take it back if they 
get to it first. Unless you build intelligent security mechanisms 
into your contracts, if there’s a bug or successful attack, 
there’s no way to shut off your servers and fix the mistake. 
Being on Ethereum by definition means everyone owns your server.
A common saying in cybersecurity is “attack is always easier than 
defense.” Blockchain sharply multiplies this imbalance. It’s far 
easier to attack because you have access to the code of every 
contract, know how much money is in it, and can take as long as 
you want to try to attack it. And once your attack is successful, 
you can potentially steal all of the money in the contract.
Imagine that you were deploying software for vending machines. 
But instead of a bug allowing you to simply steal candy from one 
machine, the bug allowed you to simultaneously steal candy from 
every machine in the world that employed this software. Yeah, 
that’s how blockchain works.


But can a digital wallets/crypto currency ever be secure  ?

Nick

Re: [your code here] HexViewer

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 2 August 2017 at 19:39:18 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
This application opens the file passed as argument and display 
the content in hex and text format:




Is this code in GitHub or DUB ?
Is there a link ?

Nick

Re: Csharp para Digital Mars D[AJUDA]

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Monday, 24 July 2017 at 22:15:05 UTC, dark777 wrote:
Eu tenho um projeto em windows form C# feito no virual studio 
um amigo meu e eu criamos para a semana academica ele faz 
cadastros e marca a presença das visitas na semana por um id de 
quem ja pagou pelas palestras queria portar ele para D.


Que biblioteca para forms vcs me recomendam para desenvolver o 
mesmo?


o que eu teria que dar mais atenção em Csharp para portar para 
a linguagem D?



PS: ele é desktop mas faz redirecionamento para um banco de 
dados mysql para salvar os dados direto no servidor...


translation via Google translate ...

I have a project in windows form C # made in the virtual studio a 
friend of mine and I created for the academic week he makes 
registrations and marks the presence of the visits in the week by 
an id of who already paid for the talks wanted to port him to D.


What library for forms vcs recommend me to develop the same?

What would I have to pay more attention in Csharp to port to the 
D language?



PS: it is desktop but it does redirect to a mysql database to 
save the data directly on the server ...

Re: Experience with https://www.patreon.com

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 6 July 2017 at 13:53:08 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
Does anyone have experience with https://www.patreon.com either 
as a patron or creator? Thanks! -- Andrei


I support someone who is a pure intellectual now, and can no 
longer survive in the university system, with his radical ideas 
of economics. He provides various content at different 
subscription points.   What do you have in mind?


Nick

Re: DConf 2017 Berlin - Streaming ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 5 May 2017 at 01:41:25 UTC, bachmeier wrote:



Nick


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqiXMN03968


thanks :)

Re: DConf 2017 Berlin - Streaming ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 4 May 2017 at 07:28:42 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqrJZg6PgnM_content=buffercc4c1_medium=social_source=twitter.com_campaign=buffer


Wow - walters talk has 1,000 views already !!

How do we see the next talk?

Nick

Re: NG technical issues: Is it just me?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 20 April 2017 at 21:16:38 UTC, David Gileadi wrote:

On 4/20/17 2:05 PM, lawrence wrote:

On 04/20/2017 02:09 PM, Timon Gehr wrote:

On 20.04.2017 21:45, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:

[snip]


It's not just you. I have the same issues.
I used to have this same problem, until I sent the server 
settings to check for updates every 2 minutes.


I don't have this problem, but my server settings check every 2 
minutes as well.


the browser access is very fast as an alternative.

DConf 2017 Berlin - Streaming ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

Hi

Can anyone advise if there will be live streaming or will there 
only YouTube videos after the event.  Not that I'm complaining.


thanks Nick

Re: Walter and Andrei and community relationship management

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 6 April 2017 at 19:27:50 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:


We commit to be more formal about the process, but overall it 
is correct that we have more say in what gets in the language. 
Allow me to add a couple of things.


First, this is the way things are commonly done in language 
design - a small committee defines a formal process and 
ultimately decides on features. In fact it is unusual that we 
put up unfinished ideas up for discussion, which we hope has 
the raises the level of responsibility in the community. I 
understand how what we did has been misunderstood as us just 
considering ourselves exempt from the due process. We have a 
very strong interest to follow a formal process and have the 
trail serve as a template to follow. (That intent is visible in 
https://github.com/dlang/DIPs/blob/master/DIPs/DIP1005.md as 
well, with the unexpected twist of an interesting idea that 
obsoleted it. The idea has come from Daniel Nielsen in this 
forum and has been adapted with credit in 
https://github.com/dlang/druntime/pull/1756.)


Second, we are very much open to increasing the size of our 
committee. This is already happening - it is obvious that known 
strong contributors with a good track record and who make 
consistently valuable have a huge impact on the language and 
library definition. Fortunately we have quite a few of those. 
In contrast, our attention is more difficult to be commanded by 
commentators who have little history of pull requests, 
good-quality DIPs, articles etc. and attempt to strong-arm us 
into pursuing underspecified ideas.


Third, all of this is a process not an immutable status. We are 
learning leadership on the job, and although I think we have 
made large strides since only e.g. one year ago, there is much 
more to improve. Expect more changes in the future and please 
bear with us and grant us your understanding as we are getting 
the hang of it.


Thank you for the detailed reply.  It helps the understanding by 
the community.

Re: Walter and Andrei and community relationship management

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 6 April 2017 at 19:17:53 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

There's one big difference. The proposal I put forth is fairly 
complete, and I am well along implementing it. deadalnix's 
requires a great deal of further work just to figure out what 
it means - as presented, it is not much more than an idea.


Nor is it a simple idea. It will upend D's type system. It'll 
likely affect much of the semantic code in the compiler, and 
will require a lot of retrofitting in Phobos. Who knows how 
extensive that will be.


I understand. It was a major change, and you likely felt the 
risks were not worth it.


I don't know any language process that would accept it as it 
stands - it would get bounced back with "needs more work".


Yes, but if you had detailed which areas, he might of been more 
receptive.


Somebody has to work on it to move it forward - who do you 
propose should do it? We don't have a team anywhere whose job 
it is to create detailed proposals based on other peoples' 
ideas (which appear in the forum every day). Things rarely move 
forward unless a champion for it self-selects with the will and 
motivation to push it relentlessly.


That sets a high bar. Can you give an example when this has 
worked well, or have they been mostly minor changes?


(The general attitude of the C++ committee is if no champion 
emerges for a proposal that is willing to fix it and address 
all concerns about it and fight for it, then the proposal is 
not worth considering. It works for them.)


So this is your and Andreis approach? If so, perhaps you want to 
document it, so everyone understands.


If you or anyone else wants to be the champion for deadalnix's 
idea, I encourage you to do so. Collaborate here or in any way 
that works for you. I'm not going to shut you or anyone down on 
such discussions. I have already done a review of it and 
identified where it needs more work, so the next step is up to 
you.


No, its his big idea, and I don't understand it well enough to 
push it.
But I also think that your vision of the language, seems to be 
fluid at present, with the requirements to support a GC, ARC, and 
the ability to remove the run-time. Again perhaps you and Andrei 
want to confirm this direction.


My intent for this post, was to bring to both your attentions, 
how this was perceived by the outsiders/community, and a 
perceived (if incorrect) double standard. That was all.


(I also did not submit it as a DIP because the DIP process at 
the time was in limbo due to Dicebot exiting it. Now that Mike 
Parker is the new DIP czar, things should be moving again.)


Good to hear.

Re: What are we going to do about mobile?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 7 April 2017 at 14:47:03 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:

Am Thu, 06 Apr 2017 05:24:07 +
schrieb Joakim :


D is currently built and optimized for that dying PC platform.


As long as the world still needs headless machines running
web sites, simulations, cloud services, ...;
as long as we still need to edit office documents, run
multimedia software to edit photos and video, play AAA video
games the "PC master race" way;
I'm confident that we have a way to go until all the
notebooks, PCs and Macs disappear. :)

I'd say we just have /more/ fully capable computers around us
nowadays. I'd probably roughly split it into
- web/cloud server machines, often running VMs
- scientific computation clusters
- desktops (including notebooks)
- smart phones
- embedded devices running Linux/Android (TVs, receivers,
  refrigerators, photo boxes, etc...)


perhaps we need need real data as to what markets are really 
growing ?

Re: What are we going to do about mobile?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 8 April 2017 at 05:37:24 UTC, Jethro wrote:

On Thursday, 6 April 2017 at 05:24:07 UTC, Joakim wrote:
I have been saying for some time now that mobile is going to 
go after the desktop next 
(http://forum.dlang.org/thread/rionbqmtrwyenmhmm...@forum.dlang.org), Samsung just announced it, for a flagship device that will ship tens of millions:


[...]


The D community should start a D based operation system for the 
android and possibly iphone devices. Since D can compile in to 
many different languages, the OS could be platform agnostic.


for industrial usage, how about QNX o/s on ARM processors.  This 
is a big market.

Walter and Andrei and community relationship management

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

I'm going to address this post to Walter and Andrei, as the joint 
captains of the D ship, so to speak.



As an outsider I can see there are two major issues, at play, at 
present, in this series of threads.


1. The technical proposals and arguments for x & y, or against x 
& y. On one side is Walter & Andrei with Walters proposal, and 
the other is Deadalnix.


2. The relationship management, between the co-captains and the 
community. And the perception of the different rules for the 
captains verses the community, which causes

resentment, and friction, to members of this community.

I'm not going to discuss item 1 in-depth, because item 2 is far 
more important.


So let's go back to the beginning.



Andrei starts a thread, 4 days ago, titled 'Exceptions in @nogc 
code'.


"Walter and I discussed the following promising setup:

Use "throw new scope Exception" from @nogc code. That will 
cause the exception to be allocated in a special stack-like 
region.


If the catching code uses "catch (scope Exception obj)", then 
a reference to the exception thus created will be passed to 
catch. At the end of the catch block there's
no outstanding reference to "obj" so it will be freed. All @nogc 
code must use this form of catch.


If the catching code uses "catch (Exception obj)", the 
exception is cloned on the gc heap and then freed.


Finally, if an exception is thrown with "throw new Exception" 
it can be caught with "catch (scope Exception obj)" by copying 
the exception from the heap into the special region, and then 
freeing the exception on the heap.


Such a scheme preserves backward compatibility and leverages 
the work done on "scope".





Deadalnix enters the discussion in Andrei's thread, with:

"It doesn't need any kind of throw new scope Exception, and 
was proposed, literally, years ago during discussion around DIP25 
and alike.


I urge you to reconsider the proposal that were made at the 
time. They solve all the problems you are discovering now, and 
more. And, while more complex that DIP25
alone, considering DIP25+DIP1000+this thing+the RC object thing, 
you are already in the zone where the "simple" approach is not so 
simple already.


Things are unfolding exactly as predicted at the time. Ad hoc 
solutions to various problems are proposed one by one and the 
overall complexity is growing much larger

than initially proposed solutions."

Others (Eugene Wissner & Dmitry Olshansky) also comment on the 
proposed syntax.


Walters responds to Deadalnix by asking for more details:

> It doesn't need any kind of throw new scope Exception, and 
was proposed,
> literally, years ago during discussion around DIP25 and 
alike.


"A link to that proposal would be appreciated."

Walter adds an additional requirement in response to Deadalnix

"This does not address the stated need (by many programmers) 
to not even have to link in the GC code. A solution that falls 
short of this will be rejected. The
rejections may not be technically well founded, but we're not in 
a good position to try to educate the masses on this. A solution 
that does not require linking to the GC

sidesteps that problem."

Walter then adds the following:

>  I urge you to reconsider the proposal that were made at 
the time. They solve all
> the problems you are discovering now, and more. And, while 
more complex that
> DIP25 alone, considering DIP25+DIP1000+this thing+the RC 
object thing, you are
> already in the zone where the "simple" approach is not so 
simple already.


"I did some searching for this previous proposal discussion, 
but could not find it. Instead, I'll go by your description of it 
here.


I've written a more fleshed out proposal and started a new 
thread with it. Feel free to rip it to shreds! "



Walter then starts a new thread, 3 days ago, titled: Proposal: 
"Exceptions and @nogc". Within the post he lays sub-headings out: 
Problem; Solution; throw Expression; catch


(Exception e); Chained Exceptions; Copying Exceptions; Legacy 
Code Breakage; Conclusion; and References. It's like a DIP in 
structure, but its NOT a formal DIP.


Walters replies to a request by Rikki Cattermole for a DIP.

>And as probably expected, DIP please. Its a big set of 
changes and warrants

> documenting in that form.

"If it survives the n.g. discussion I will. Though the DIP 
process is in limbo at the moment since Dicebot is no longer 
running it."


Here Walter is saying, lets discuss it thoroughly on the n.g. and 
then LATER, if it's any good, he will formal put it into a DIP.

Fair enough.


Discussions continue.

Deadalix then composes a long reply, in Andreis thread, to 
Walters request. He is hopeful he will be heard:


"The forum search isn't returning anything useful so I'm not 
sure how to get that link. However, it goes 

Re: Exceptions in @nogc code

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 2 April 2017 at 21:27:07 UTC, deadalnix wrote:

On Saturday, 1 April 2017 at 22:08:27 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

On 4/1/2017 7:54 AM, deadalnix wrote:
It doesn't need any kind of throw new scope Exception, and 
was proposed,

literally, years ago during discussion around DIP25 and alike.


A link to that proposal would be appreciated.


The forum search isn't returning anything useful so I'm not 
sure how to get that link. However, it goes roughly as follow. 
Note that it's a solution to solve DIP25+DIP1000+RC+nogc 
exception and a sludge of other issues, and that comparing it 
to any of these independently will yield the obvious it is more 
complex. But that wouldn't be a fair comparison, as one should 
compare it to the sum of all these proposals, not to any of 
them independently.



[snip]


This mechanism solves numerous other issues. Notably and non 
exhaustively:

 - General reduction in the amount of garbage created.
 - Ability to transfers ownership of data between thread safely 
(without cast to/from shared).

 - Safe std.parralelism.
 - Elaborate construction of shared and immutable objects.
 - Safe reference counting.
 - Safe "arena" style reference counting such as: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE

 - Solves problems with collection ownership and alike.


This silence is killing me!

Can one assume that Walter is thinking about deadalnix's detailed 
proposal above, and that he will give a formal response, once he 
has given it serious thought, and discussed it with Andrei ?


cheers Nick

Re: Update on Unums

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Tuesday, 14 March 2017 at 19:32:57 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 06:50:07PM +, Nick B via 
Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:

On Tuesday, 14 March 2017 at 13:38:09 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
> On Tuesday, 14 March 2017 at 08:21:03 UTC, Andrea Fontana 
> wrote:
> > 
> > It seems public: 
> > http://insidehpc.com/2017/02/john-gustafson-presents-beyond-floating-point-next-generation-computer-arithmetic/
> 
> Also in pdf here 
> http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/170201-slides.pdf


Thank you both for posting these links :).

[...]

Indeed.

But while the .pdf mentions Posits and Valids, the following 
slides only discuss Posits.  Where's the discussion on Valids?


In spite of that, though, Posits appear to be a much better 
candidate at replacing IEEE 794 floats than the previous unum 
incarnations. I felt the previous incarnations, while clever 
and workable in theory, posed too many practical challenges to 
implement on silicon.  The current description of Posits seem 
to be much more feasible to put on silicon.


Still, though, I wonder what Gustafson has up his sleeves wrt. 
Valids.


In the Stanford presentation pdf, (note that these change from 
presentation to presentation) on page 12, is the only mention of 
Valids. I thought these were a rename of Sets of Real 
Numbers(SORNS) from his Type 2 Unums, but after reviewing the 
slides again, I'm not sure.  I believe that this needs to be 
vertified with Dr Gustafson, as you correctly point out there are 
no examples of Valids.


But when I review his slides from his New Zealand talk, there is 
an additional slide, where he states that (1) "Posit pairs beat 
intervals at their own games, too: Valid mode." and (2) "Posit 
mode: Round unum after every operation.  Valid mode: rigorous 
answer bounds; NaN answers are sets. "


If anyone wants a copy of these New Zealand slides, please advise 
me of your email address.

Re: Update on Unums

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Tuesday, 14 March 2017 at 13:38:09 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

On Tuesday, 14 March 2017 at 08:21:03 UTC, Andrea Fontana wrote:


It seems public: 
http://insidehpc.com/2017/02/john-gustafson-presents-beyond-floating-point-next-generation-computer-arithmetic/


Also in pdf here
http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/170201-slides.pdf


Thank you both for posting these links :).

Cheers
Nick

Update on Unums

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

Hi Everyone

Here is an update on Unums.

John L Gustafson at the Multicore World 2017 Conference, in 
Wellington,  New Zealand, in February 2017, gave another 
presentation to his Unum idea.   He has again reworked the basis 
of his idea again.  He has now called this latest version: Type 3 
Unums (2017), and introduced new labels of Posits and Valids for 
contrasting Calculation Esthetics.


If I get the approval to post Johns latest presentation, I will 
do so.


cheers
Nick

Re: Plugin for 1C:Enterprise in dmd

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Wednesday, 18 January 2017 at 12:00:53 UTC, MGW wrote:

For clarity you can see this short video 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apLppufZulI


The short video is in Russian only :(

Re: Silvermirror to mirror websites

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Sunday, 15 January 2017 at 23:32:34 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jan 2017 21:30:47 +, Nick B wrote:





I'm still on 2.071.1. Are you experiencing issues on another 
version?


No, just checking.

Thanks Nick

Re: Silvermirror to mirror websites

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Sunday, 15 January 2017 at 02:28:34 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:

Github: https://github.com/dhasenan/silvermirror

Silvermirror is a tool to mirror websites -- download them 
locally and serve copies of them.



What is the version of D that Silvermirror is compiled under ?

Nick

Re: Silicon Valley D Meetup - December 22, 2016 - "The Curse of Knowledge: Et tu, D?" by Adam Wilson

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Sunday, 25 December 2016 at 13:13:32 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

On 12/25/2016 2:15 AM, Adam Wilson wrote:




The failure of mine was the batteries on the wireless mike gave 
out about 14 minutes in, which is where the audio cut off. 
Nobody noticed until the video was reviewed. Next time, I plan 
on bringing my own batteries.


Perhaps someone should be listening to audio, as the recording is 
being made? Even when there is sound, parts of the audio are 
pretty bad!!


Nick

Re: Silicon Valley D Meetup - December 22, 2016 - "The Curse of Knowledge: Et tu, D?" by Adam Wilson

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Thursday, 22 December 2016 at 06:21:46 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:

Reminder...

On 12/15/2016 12:20 AM, Ali Çehreli wrote:
Adam Wilson, a past DConf speaker, has graciously accepted to 
be our
guest speaker this month. Although he will present in-person, 
as usual,
we will be live on Google Hangouts as well. I will post the 
link here

right before we start at 7pm Pacific time.



Ali

Any chance of a recording of this being put on YouTube, for 
viewing at a later date ?


Nick

OT: Tiobe Index - December Headline: What is happening to good old language C?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

The programming language of all programming languages C is 
consistently going down since November 2015. The language was in 
a range of 15% to 20% for more than 15 years and this year it 
suddenly started to suffer. Its ratings are now less than 10% and 
there is no clear way back to the top. So what happened to C? 
Some months ago we already listed some possible reasons: it is 
not a language that you think of while writing programs for 
popular fields such as mobile apps or websites, it is not 
evolving that much and there is no big company promoting the 
language. May be there are more reasons. If you happen to know 
one, please share it with us.


source: http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/   (Dec 2016)


cheers
Nick

Re: D Flowgraph GUI Interface

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 5 December 2016 at 12:35:46 UTC, D.Rex wrote:

Howdy,

I am embarking on a project to create a Flowgraph (node based) 
GUI interface, much like Blender's Node Editor or Unreal ENgine 
4's Blueprint System, for other future projects, I have been 
looking around for many months now on tutorials but I can never 
quite find anything.   but I really like D as a language, and 
want this interface to be written in it.


Cheers!


try here

https://s3.amazonaws.com/gamedev-tutorials/Tutorials/Scripting-Flow_Graph-(01)_Introduction_to_Flow_Graph.pdf

Re: Earthquakes - New Zealand

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 14 November 2016 at 14:25:02 UTC, Meta wrote:
On Sunday, 13 November 2016 at 12:17:22 UTC, rikki cattermole 
wrote:




I saw in the news that there was a tsunami and many aftershocks 
coming after the initial quake. Hope everyone's okay.


The top  of the south island and Wellington took the biggest 
hits. Wellington is recovering well, but the south island is 
another matter, and will take longer.


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 10 October 2016 at 05:32:55 UTC, Nick B wrote:

On Saturday, 8 October 2016 at 00:35:31 UTC, Nick B wrote:

On Sunday, 25 September 2016 at 02:22:01 UTC, Nick B wrote:


I suggest that now, programmers would/may have a choice: be 
slow and correct, or fast and incorrect, and that would 
depend if real accuracy is important or not, the types of 
problems being work on, and cost of failure. (see examples in 
John Powerpoint presentation).



Hi Everyone.

Here is a link:  [ http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2913029 
 ]
of an interview between John L Gustafson & Walter Tichy 
(Professor of Computer Science) published in the ACM Digital 
Library. Published April 2016. pdf - 11 pages.

It is a easy and informative read with a computer science lens.

I loved this quote at the end of this interview: "Unums are to 
floats what floats are to integers. They are the next step in the 
evolution of computer arithmetic". Perhaps what D will need in 
the future.



cheers
Nick

Re: [Slides] Generic Low Level Programming with D - The Better C for your Business

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Monday, 31 October 2016 at 19:59:59 UTC, cym13 wrote:
On Friday, 28 October 2016 at 06:46:27 UTC, Ilya Yaroshenko 
wrote:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1w1cQ8vDluglRIt8Qdnm-sY7kqxoKZxbPEWW6tR3lPpo/edit?usp=sharing


Do you think you could maybe find the time to do a quick blog 
post to illustrate the slides? To be honnest the slides without 
the presentation aren't that clear or useful but I'd like to 
hear what you have to say.


Agreed. Some more context would help.

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 8 October 2016 at 00:35:31 UTC, Nick B wrote:

On Sunday, 25 September 2016 at 02:22:01 UTC, Nick B wrote:


I suggest that now, programmers would/may have a choice: be 
slow and correct, or fast and incorrect, and that would depend 
if real accuracy is important or not, the types of problems 
being work on, and cost of failure. (see examples in John 
Powerpoint presentation).


But I will ask John G, on the types of users showing interest 
in UNUMS.


Hi.
Below is a copy of John's reply, which is interesting and 
insightful!


[starts]


There are some kinds of problems that can only be solved by 
unums and not by floats. Initially, those are the main focus. 
Examples include:


 * Global optimization where proof is needed that all optima 
have been found


 * Root-finding methods for fully general functions, including 
non-differentiable functions and other poorly-behaved functions


 * N-body dynamics with rigorous bounds on the orbital 
trajectories that grow only linearly in the number of time steps


 * Methods that need ultra-fast but ultra-low-precision initial 
solution with guaranteed mathematical correctness


 * Solutions of systems of nonlinear equations that also reveal 
whether the problem is stiff or unstable.


It is a misconception, more common than I would like, that the 
purpose of unums is to substitute for floats in existing floats 
and then show some kind of superiority. That can happen in 
terms of getting better answers with fewer bits, and I gave 
some examples in my book, but they won't be "faster," whatever 
that means. Floats are a guess about the answer, so they 
contain no rigorous mathematical bound on the answer; how do I 
compare their speed at guessing, with the speed of a method 
that is rigorous? Most people don't even think about the 
information in an answer as the goal of a benchmark, and just 
measure the time to finish an algorithm and print a result.


Put another way, if you don't care whether an answer is 
mathematically correct, then I can compute very fast indeed. 
Instantly, in fact.


[ends]

Insightful indeed. Of course, these types of problems may be 
too specialised for the  general D community. I really don't 
know for sure.


 I decided to pop this [John G's reply] up again, in case anyone 
was interested in  * rigorous mathematical bound [solutions] on 
[an] answer * even if this is for a small D audience.


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 25 September 2016 at 02:22:01 UTC, Nick B wrote:


I suggest that now, programmers would/may have a choice: be 
slow and correct, or fast and incorrect, and that would depend 
if real accuracy is important or not, the types of problems 
being work on, and cost of failure. (see examples in John 
Powerpoint presentation).


But I will ask John G, on the types of users showing interest 
in UNUMS.


Hi.
Below is a copy of John's reply, which is interesting and 
insightful!


[starts]


There are some kinds of problems that can only be solved by unums 
and not by floats. Initially, those are the main focus. Examples 
include:


 * Global optimization where proof is needed that all optima have 
been found


 * Root-finding methods for fully general functions, including 
non-differentiable functions and other poorly-behaved functions


 * N-body dynamics with rigorous bounds on the orbital 
trajectories that grow only linearly in the number of time steps


 * Methods that need ultra-fast but ultra-low-precision initial 
solution with guaranteed mathematical correctness


 * Solutions of systems of nonlinear equations that also reveal 
whether the problem is stiff or unstable.


It is a misconception, more common than I would like, that the 
purpose of unums is to substitute for floats in existing floats 
and then show some kind of superiority. That can happen in terms 
of getting better answers with fewer bits, and I gave some 
examples in my book, but they won't be "faster," whatever that 
means. Floats are a guess about the answer, so they contain no 
rigorous mathematical bound on the answer; how do I compare their 
speed at guessing, with the speed of a method that is rigorous? 
Most people don't even think about the information in an answer 
as the goal of a benchmark, and just measure the time to finish 
an algorithm and print a result.


Put another way, if you don't care whether an answer is 
mathematically correct, then I can compute very fast indeed. 
Instantly, in fact.


[ends]

Insightful indeed. Of course, these types of problems may be too 
specialised for the  general D community. I really don't know for 
sure.


In light of what John has stated above, I should therefore 
correct my previous statement:


"I suggest that now, programmers going forward will have a 
choice: be slower with a rigorous mathematical bound answer, or 
use a fast and incorrect guess, and that would depend if real 
accuracy is important or not, the types of problems being work 
on, and the cost of failure".


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 25 September 2016 at 21:47:15 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
A dub package seems like the best approach at present. I would 
be quite interested in such a library solution, FWIW. If it 
turns out to be a good idea, then we can consider putting it 
into Phobos, or perhaps even the language.  But let's not jump 
the gun here.



T


Agreed.  This would be a good first step.
Just need to wait for a reference implementation and test cases 
to be developed, and published.


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 24 September 2016 at 12:56:48 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:




From what I read in the freely-available materials on Unum 
(actually I also skimmed the book) it seems to me Unum is 
predicated on a hardware implementation. It seems there would 
be little interest in a slow software emulation. -- Andrei


Andrei

I suggest that now, programmers would/may have a choice: be slow 
and correct, or fast and incorrect, and that would depend if real 
accuracy is important or not, the types of problems being work 
on, and cost of failure. (see examples in John Powerpoint 
presentation).


But I will ask John G, on the types of users showing interest in 
UNUMS.


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 17 August 2016 at 16:03:22 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 03:44:48AM +, Nick B via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:

On Monday, 15 August 2016 at 00:42:16 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

[...]
> Thanks to operator overloading and alias this, we can 
> probably do a pretty good job implementing unums as a 
> library so that people can try it out.


It may be easier to link to the reference C implementation 
first.


Easier, certainly. But I think D may offer some advantages over 
a purely C implementation. It's worth exploring, at any rate.


For anyone interested, John Gustafson has posted recently a 
Powerpoint presentation (dated 2 June 2016), which details the 
failures (both technical and dollar wise) of Floating Point 
calculations. At the end of the presentation, he details the 
state of the current implementations (eg Lawrence Livermore 
National Lab, and others etc), and the proposed implementations 
in hardware!



http://www.johngustafson.net/presentations/UnumArithmetic-ICRARseminar.pptx

enjoy.

Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 17 August 2016 at 11:34:15 UTC, Seb wrote:



If you want Andrei or Walter's opinion on whether they could in 
principle imagine Unum as part of Phobos or even the language, 
you should ping them directly via mail.


Agreed.

Re: Implement the "unum" representation in D ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 21 September 2016 at 07:52:18 UTC, Ethan Watson 
wrote:

On Tuesday, 20 September 2016 at 22:52:57 UTC, Nic Brummell

Is there some central repository with links to the active 
projects? I'll try and wrap my head fully around the math 
before we get to that point though.


Ethan

There is the other thread on this subject. Its called:

» General » Unum II announcement

there is a lot a technical discussion on Unums at:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/unum-computing

Note that a Skip Cave is even claiming to have UNums running in 
the J programming language.


You may also want to read John G post at the bottom of this 
thread Called"The Great Debate: John Gustafson and William Kahan 
(Video?)"


cheers N.

Re: Implement the "unum" representation in D ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 20 September 2016 at 22:52:57 UTC, Nic Brummell wrote:
If anyone is still interested in this concept whatsoever, we 
are holding a mini-workshop on the current developments of 
Unums at the University of California Santa Cruz on Oct 24th.  
We'd love to have some participation from interested parties, 
including presentations on any attempts to implement (in D?) 
etc.  Please see https://systems.soe.ucsc.edu/2016-symposium or 
contact me via here.  Nic.




Nic

Thanks for the heads up.  John Gustafson will have the best 
understanding as to the progress to implement this in "C" I 
believe.  Perhaps you could post back an update after the 
conference ?


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 15 August 2016 at 00:42:16 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 09:08:31PM +, Nick B via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:


While I certainly hope this research would eventually 
revolutionize numerical applications, it would take a long time 
before it would catch on, and until then, I think it's better 
to have unums available as a library rather than introducing it 
into the language itself. Having it available via dub or 
something like that would probably be a very good idea.


I totally agree.

Thanks to operator overloading and alias this, we can probably 
do a pretty good job implementing unums as a library so that 
people can try it out.


It may be easier to link to the reference C implementation first.

I note that I haven't seen any feedback from Walter or Andrei. I 
can only assume that neither are interested in this subject.


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 10 August 2016 at 08:36:41 UTC, Nick B wrote:

On Tuesday, 9 August 2016 at 09:45:58 UTC, Nick B wrote:
http://www.johngustafson.net/pubs/RadicalApproach.pdf

Please note that Figure 8 on page 9 has errors.


Please note these errors have now been corrected, and the paper  
is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons 
Attribution-Non Commercial 3.0 License which permits 
non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work 
without further permission provided the original work is properly 
cited."


Does anyone have any feedback on this paper ?

Does anyone feel that Unums should be part of D ?

Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 9 August 2016 at 09:45:58 UTC, Nick B wrote:

On Tuesday, 23 February 2016 at 21:47:10 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 09:20:23PM +, Nick B via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:

?
I hope to be able to present a link to the finalised paper on 
Unums within 24 to 48 hours.




Here is the link to the paper as promised.

http://www.johngustafson.net/pubs/RadicalApproach.pdf

Please note that Figure 8 on page 9 has errors.  Three of the 
four-bit unums on this figure is wrong, as you have duplicates of 
0110, 0100, 0010.


For the correct diagram please see page 20 on  
http://www.johngustafson.net/presentations/Unums2.0.pdf


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 23 February 2016 at 21:47:10 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 09:20:23PM +, Nick B via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:


I do want to clarify, though, that I think at this point 
implementing unum in the D compiler is almost certainly 
premature. What I had in mind was more of a unum library that 
early adopters can use to get a feel for how things would work.
 If the unum system turns out to have garner enough support 
that it starts getting hardware support, then it should be 
relatively easy to transition it into a built-in type.  I don't 
see this happening for at least another 5-10, though.  It took 
at least as long (probably longer) for hardware manufacturers 
to adopt the IEEE standard, and right now unums aren't even 
standardized yet.



T


just a quick update re Unum 2.0

I hope to be able to present a link to the finalised paper on 
Unums within 24 to 48 hours.


Also here, below, is an quick update, on the software development 
on Unums from Prof Gustafson.


"Work is progressing on a reference C implementation on two 
fronts, and I am presently trying to unite the two. One is the 
coding by Isaac Yonemoto, which is being funded by my Singapore 
employer (A*STAR)... which is like having a team of about eight 
programmers, right there. He's an ultra-fast programmer and a 
crack mathematician as well, so he finds amazing shortcuts and 
insights that I don't notice. Isaac tends to code in Julia first, 
and C second. When he does C, he almost does assembler; he 
carefully studies what x86 instructions are available and 
squeezes every cycle.


The other is a small team at UC Santa Cruz with one applied math 
grad student doing most of the coding and a couple of faculty 
advisors (plus me dialing in now and then), and just about has 
plus-minus-times-divide working, the last I heard. This is part 
of an Open Source initiative, so you can bet that this will be 
documented and released into the wild the way open source 
software should be. That one is going for C directly.


There may be other efforts. Some MIT folks also created a Julia 
version of type 2 unums, and it may be almost as fast as C. There 
may be others."

Re: short programme from "Programming in D" by Ali Cehreli.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Tuesday, 14 June 2016 at 16:09:00 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:

On 6/14/16 11:44 AM, Ali Çehreli wrote:

On 06/14/2016 04:52 AM, Nick B wrote:



Further, when the format string is a literal like the one used 
in the
program, the compiler can in theory determine at compile time 
that the

format string does not match the rest of the arguments:

readf (" %s, ");
// "No argument for %s"

This is a desired feature but dmd does not have this yet. 
Since dmd
provides the front end to gdc and ldc, they don't have this 
feature either.


I will log a feature request with Walter.

Nick

Re: short programme from "Programming in D" by Ali Cehreli.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Tuesday, 14 June 2016 at 09:53:03 UTC, cym13 wrote:

On Tuesday, 14 June 2016 at 09:39:05 UTC, Nick B wrote:

On Tuesday, 14 June 2016 at 09:28:18 UTC, cym13 wrote:

On Tuesday, 14 June 2016 at 09:17:35 UTC, Nick B wrote:
Hi, Can anyone assist me with the short D programme. It is 
taken straight from  "Programming in D" by Ali Cehreli.  The 
code below is the solution,  on page 684.

The  Exercise is on Page 27, item 2 half way down the page.

[snip]



It then printed as much of a stack trace as it could, not very 
useful as you didn't do much but it's there.


You gave it garbage and it threw an error. Compiler bugs are a 
reality but not *that* common ;-)


Thanks for the assistance. I assumed that the compiler  would at 
least throw a line number, to hint at where the problem was.

Re: short programme from "Programming in D" by Ali Cehreli.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Tuesday, 14 June 2016 at 09:28:18 UTC, cym13 wrote:

On Tuesday, 14 June 2016 at 09:17:35 UTC, Nick B wrote:
Hi, Can anyone assist me with the short D programme. It is 
taken straight from  "Programming in D" by Ali Cehreli.  The 
code below is the solution,  on page 684.

The  Exercise is on Page 27, item 2 half way down the page.

[...]


Misplaced quote in your readf.


Thank you.  Question: is this a compiler bug ?

short programme from "Programming in D" by Ali Cehreli.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-learn]

Hi, Can anyone assist me with the short D programme. It is taken 
straight from  "Programming in D" by Ali Cehreli.  The code below 
is the solution,  on page 684.

The  Exercise is on Page 27, item 2 half way down the page.

The problem is that the program crashes, when it runs.   The only 
thing I have changed is the placement of the curly brackets on 
new lines, otherwise the code is the same.  My text editor is 
Sublime 3 - Build 3114.


DMD32 D Compiler v2.069.2
Running on Win 7
result:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
DMD32 D Compiler v2.069.2

C:\Users\Joan\Prog\Source>page27b
Roll the dice .
3

object.Exception@C:\Users\Joan\Prog\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\form
at.d(594): Enforcement failed

0x00403849
0x004037F4
0x0040251F
0x00402472
0x0040858F
0x00408553
0x00408454
0x00404C83
0x76DA338A in BaseThreadInitThunk
0x777B9902 in RtlInitializeExceptionChain
0x777B98D5 in RtlInitializeExceptionChain

C:\Users\Joan\Prog\Source>

***

Here is all the source:

import std.stdio;
void main ()
{
writeln  ("Roll the dice .");
int die ;
readf (" %s, ");

if ((die == 1) || (die == 2) || (die == 3))
{
writeln("You won");
}
else if ((die == 4) || (die == 5) || (die == 6))
{
writeln("I won");
}
else
{
writeln("ERROR: ", die , "is invalid");
}
}


Note, this source below, take from the code samples .zip file 
works correctly !!


module if_solution_3;

import std.stdio;

void main() {
write("What is the value of the die? ");
int die;
readf(" %s", );

if ((die == 1) || (die == 2) || (die == 3)) {
writeln("You won");

} else if ((die == 4) || (die == 5) || (die == 6)) {
writeln("I won");

} else {
writeln("ERROR: ", die, " is invalid");
}
}

with Thanks
Nick

Re: Sociomantic's short DConf2016 video

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Tuesday, 24 May 2016 at 12:36:44 UTC, Bastiaan Veelo wrote:
On Tuesday, 24 May 2016 at 11:06:45 UTC, Leandro Lucarella 
wrote:
For the ones that missed it (and the ones that didn't too), 
here is a short video about the conference.


https://vimeo.com/167235872


Well done.


agreed. A well done video.

Re: D mentioned but Rust wins

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 17 May 2016 at 05:39:41 UTC, Nick B wrote:

source: 
http://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus-amazon-cloud-empire/


also

But Go’s “memory footprint”—the amount of computer memory it 
demands while running Magic Pocket—was too high for the massive 
storage systems the company was trying to build. Dropbox needed a 
language that would take up less space in memory, because so much 
memory would be filled with all those files streaming onto the 
machine. So, in the middle of this two-and-half-year project, 
they switched to Rust on the Diskotech machines.

D mentioned but Rust wins

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

[snip] Crowling, Turner, and others originally built Magic Pocket 
using a new programming language from Google called Go. Here too, 
Dropbox is riding a much larger trend, languages designed 
specifically for the new world of massively distributed online 
systems. Apple has one called Swift, Mozilla makes one called 
Rust, and there’s an independent one called D. All these 
languages let coders build software quickly that runs 
quickly—even executed across hundreds or thousands of machines.


source: 
http://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus-amazon-cloud-empire/

Re: How are you enjoying DConf? And where to go next?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 6 May 2016 at 14:13:35 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
The atmosphere here is great, and I'm curious how it feels for 
those who are watching remotely. Is the experience good? What 
can we do better?


I also viewed from New Zealand, but I thought it was hard to view 
the images, and to see the persons face when they are talking. 
Sometimes the images were of the speaker standing on the stage at 
a distance.  Too much of the stream was black around the side of 
the speaker.  The best way to stream/record such a event of 
someone talking to slides, is a split image approach. Part of the 
image is a close up of the speaker, with good audio, and the rest 
of the image is on the presentation.  Later when its a Q this 
can change, so you can see the interaction with the audience.


Nick

Re: Live streaming of DConf 2016: confirmed

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Tuesday, 3 May 2016 at 21:45:27 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:



I forwarded your question appropriately. -- Andrei


Thank you.

Re: Live streaming of DConf 2016: confirmed

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Monday, 2 May 2016 at 00:45:39 UTC, Nick B wrote:


[snip]
Only bit that is still decided upon is platform choice for 
primary stream source - will update this topic when it gets 
settled.


Any update on this ?


Can't we get some communication on this issue ?

I can't be the only person who wants to know what is happening ?

Nick

Re: Live streaming of DConf 2016: confirmed

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Thursday, 21 April 2016 at 17:24:43 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
Have just got a confirmation that there will both live stream 
and high quality recording for later publishing during DConf 
2016 @ Berlin - not being able to attend is not a reason to not 
participate! ;)



[snip]
Only bit that is still decided upon is platform choice for 
primary stream source - will update this topic when it gets 
settled.


Any update on this ?

Re: DConf 2016 Berlin - Live Streaming ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 21 April 2016 at 00:42:51 UTC, Dicebot wrote:



Almost certainly yes. I will make announcement as soon as some 
last details are figured out (expect it within 24 hours ;)).


Hi. Any news on this this ?

Nick

DConf 2016 Berlin - Live Streaming ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

Hi.

Can anyone advise if there will be live streaming of this event ?

cheers
Nick

Re: Opportunity: Software Execution Time Determinism

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 13 April 2016 at 15:50:40 UTC, Nordlöw wrote:
I'm currenly in an industry with extremely high demands on 
software determinism, both in space and time (hard realtime).






I'm aware of the lack of absolute time-determinism in the CPU 
architectures of today.


What is absolute time-determinism in a CPU architectures ?

and why is it important in hard real time environments ?

Nick

Re: Suggestion for a book

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 2 March 2016 at 17:12:39 UTC, karabuta wrote:
Whilst coding in D, there so many approaches one can take to 
structure his project. As the code base grow large, one can get 
really confused as to how best to structure code (modules, 
directories, classes, using class or structs, utilizing 
language features, etc.).


Making a good decision initially will save a project a whole 
lot of development time (+ debugging & testing time).


This would certainly be a useful book. I would buy one.

Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 25 February 2016 at 10:36:08 UTC, Robbert van Dalen 
wrote:

On Wednesday, 24 February 2016 at 21:43:59 UTC, Nick B wrote:
On Wednesday, 24 February 2016 at 20:11:39 UTC, Robbert van 
Dalen wrote:




Nick,

I've just asked Dr. Gustafson to create a group on his behalf 
and he was fine with it:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/unum-computing

 It would be nice if you'd subscribe to it:


Robbert,

I will subscribe, as you suggested.  I see that the new user 
group has been getting page views already. Thats quick.


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 24 February 2016 at 21:14:46 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:
On Wednesday, 24 February 2016 at 20:59:20 UTC, Timon Gehr 
wrote:




The basic idea for Unums seems that you get an estimate of the 
bounds and then recompute using higher precision or better 
algorithm when necessary.


Agreed. This seems to be my understanding as well.

Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 24 February 2016 at 20:11:39 UTC, Robbert van Dalen 
wrote:
Sorry to hijack this thread, but I think unum II is the best 
thing since sliced bread!


:)


It would be great if Dr. Gustafson would initiate a google 
group so we can discuss the inner workings of unum II. If not, 
I guess I will start one :)


Where do you suggest that such a group hang out ?

Robert, what is your background ?

I have asked Dr. Gustafson how he would like to respond to some 
of the questions raised on this forum.


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 24 February 2016 at 21:07:01 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:




Implement unum-computing as GPU-compute-shaders. They are 
present in OpenGL ES 3.1, so they will become ubiquitous.


Are you sure ?
Here is a link to the spec (pdf, 505 pages) and I can find no 
mention of unums ?


https://www.khronos.org/registry/gles/specs/3.1/es_spec_3.1.pdf


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 23 February 2016 at 21:47:10 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 09:20:23PM +, Nick B via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:

On Tuesday, 23 February 2016 at 18:35:47 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:


What I had in mind was more of a unum library that early 
adopters can use to get a feel for how things would work. If 
the unum system turns out to have garner enough support that it 
starts getting hardware support, then it should be relatively 
easy to transition it into a built-in type.


I agree that it need to become a test library first for the early 
adopters to play with.


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 23 February 2016 at 18:35:47 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:



This is very interesting, and looks more promising than the 
previous unum presentation.


While it's too early to hope for a hardware implementation, I'm 
interested in implementing a software emulation in D.  D's 
powerful templating system could let us experiment with various 
implementation possibilities (e.g., different word sizes, 
variable size vs. fixed sizes, etc.), to get a feel for how it 
would work in real-life.  >> T


Excellent suggestion. At least one firm supporter.


Would Andrei or Walter like to comment ?


Please note that the error identified in this thread has now been 
corrected in the Powerpoint presentation. The error may still be 
in the PDF.


Nick

Re: Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 22 February 2016 at 17:15:54 UTC, Charles wrote:
On Monday, 22 February 2016 at 13:11:47 UTC, Guillaume Piolat 
wrote:


 Slide 12, 0101 is repeated. The top

one should actually be 0111 I believe (this error also repeats).


I will check with John re this error.



Aside from that, the notes were super useful, not sure if you 
could add them in there.


Its likely that we can not add the Notes to the PDF, which is why 
I recommended to everyone, to download the presentation, and read 
it via Powerpoint, then you can see all the Notes.


Nick

Unum II announcement

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

"For those of you who think you have already seen unums, this is 
a different approach. Every one of the slides here is completely 
new and has not been presented before the Multicore 2016 
conference [in Wgtn, NZ]."


Here is the link as promised to the new presentation by John 
Gustafson:

http://www.johngustafson.net/unums.html


I strongly recommend that you download the presentation 
[Powerpoint, 35 pages] as there are lots of Notes with the 
presentation.


Note that the previous thread re Unums, can be found here:
https://forum.dlang.org/thread/quzsjahniokjotvta...@forum.dlang.org


I welcome any feedback, especially from Walter or Andrei.


cheers Nick

Re: Implement the "unum" representation in D ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 20 February 2016 at 23:25:40 UTC, Nick B wrote:

On Wednesday, 17 February 2016 at 16:35:41 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

On Wednesday, 17 February 2016 at 08:11:21 UTC, Nick B wrote:




Having just looked at the slides again, I believe this will 
break compatibility with std.math, (for example it throws out 
NaN), just as D has broken full compatibility with all of C++.


UNUM II  is also proposing to break completely from IEEE 754 
floats and gain Computation with mathematical rigor ...


Can anyone tell me who are the maths experts, and hard science 
users, around here ?



Nick

Re: Implement the "unum" representation in D ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 17 February 2016 at 16:35:41 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

On Wednesday, 17 February 2016 at 08:11:21 UTC, Nick B wrote:




Wrt phobos, I would just recommend that whatever unum library 
gets eventually written has a companion with the equivalent of 
the functions from std.math.


Having just looked at the slides again, I believe this will break 
compatibility with std.math, (for example it throws out NaN), 
just as D has broken full compatibility with all of C++.


I hope to have a link to the revised presentation within 7 days.

Can anyone tell me who are the maths experts, and hard science 
users, around here ?



Nick

Re: Implement the "unum" representation in D ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

Hi

John Gustafson was in town (Wellington, NZ) for the Multicore 
World Conference 2016 ( http://www.multicoreworld.com/) 
conference. I caught up with him, tonight, and spoke to him for 
about two hours. Here is a quick summary of what we discussed.  
John has just redesigned Unums, to address the design issues in 
version 1.0.  He presented his Powerpoint presentation to the 
conference, with the details of Unums 2.0 (this is a tentative 
name at present).  Its a improved design, but I will only brief 
detail it:  "It  will have  more dynamic range with 16-bit values 
than IEEE half-precision, but only by a small amount. Still 
remarkable to be uniformly better in dynamic range and precision, 
with support for inexact values and perfect reciprocation. If a 
language supports just one unum data type, John believes it 
should be the 16-bit one".  John has agreed to provide a link to 
the Powerpoint presentation, in a couple of weeks, and then 
later, a link to his new published paper on the subject, when it 
is ready.  There will likely be a new book, building on version 
1.0, and, again, tentatively titled 'Unums 2.0'. I also discussed 
with him, about integrating it with D. At the present, there is a 
'C' codebase under construction, but this could be rewritten in D 
in the future.  D may require some language changes, and a new 
phobos library, to support this advanced functionality. Of course 
Walter will have decide if he wants this advanced numbering 
system as a part of D.


As an aside, John mentioned that Rex Computing 
(http://www.rexcomputing.com/) is using Unums with the Julia 
language, for their new hyper-efficient processor architecture. 
It will be interesting to see what these whiz kids deliver in 
time.


cheers
Nick

Re: OT: 'conduct unbecoming of a hacker'

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 10 February 2016 at 02:11:25 UTC, Laeeth Isharc 
wrote:

http://sealedabstract.com/rants/conduct-unbecoming-of-a-hacker/
(His particular suggestion about accept patches by default is 
not why I post this).

'




...
Hacking should be about making things. And yet a great many of 
our institutions are set up to discourage, distract, destroy, 
and derail the making of anything. It’s time we called it what 
it is: conduct unbecoming of a hacker.

'


Great post, and very funny.

Nick

Re: Release vibe.d 0.7.27

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Tuesday, 9 February 2016 at 19:16:49 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:

This release brings some larger changes:

 - A lot of work went into performance tuning. Single-core 
performance

   of the HTTP server is improved by about +50% and multi-core
   performance scales properly again after excessive lock 
contention
   sneaked in in one of the previous releases. The number of 
worker
   threads is now also properly determined on all systems 
(including

   multi-CPU), which should fix the numbers for multi-threaded
   benchmarks (an update to the TechEmpower benchmark suite is 
on the

   way).

I look forward to reading the numbers, and seeing how it 
compares, to other web servers :)


Nick

Re: vibe.d benchmarks

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 31 December 2015 at 12:44:37 UTC, Daniel Kozak wrote:

V Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:26:12 +
yawniek via Digitalmars-d  napsáno:





obvious typo and thanks for investigating etienne.

@daniel: i made similar results over the network.
i want to redo them with a more optimized setup though. my wrk
server was too weak.

the local results are still relevant as its a common setup to 
have nginx distribute to a few vibe instances locally.


One thing I forgot to mention I have to modify few things

vibe.d has (probably) bug it use threadPerCPU instead of 
corePerCPU in setupWorkerThreads, here is a commit which make 
possible to setup it by hand.


https://github.com/rejectedsoftware/vibe.d/commit/f946c3a840eab4ef5f7b98906a6eb143509e1447

(I just modify vibe.d code to use all my 4 cores and it helps a 
lot)


can someone tell me what changes need to be commited, so that we 
have a chance at getting some decent (or even average) benchmark 
numbers ?

Re: vibe.d benchmarks

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 28 December 2015 at 13:10:59 UTC, Charles wrote:
On Monday, 28 December 2015 at 12:24:17 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:

https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/

The entries for vibe.d are either doing very poorly or fail to 
complete. Maybe someone should look into this?


Sönke is already on it.

http://forum.rejectedsoftware.com/groups/rejectedsoftware.vibed/post/29110


Correct me if I am wrong here, but as far I can tell there is no 
independent benchmarks showing performance (superior or good 
enough) of D verses Go, or against just about any other language, 
as well  ?


https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r11=peak=json=cnc=zik0vz-zik0zj-zik0zj-zik0zj-hra0hr

Re: pl0stuff an optimizing pl0 > c transcompiler

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Tuesday, 29 December 2015 at 17:59:15 UTC, Stefan Koch wrote:

On Tuesday, 29 December 2015 at 04:37:44 UTC, Nick B wrote:

Would you know what is required to get good performance ?


I can guess. However without actually implementing it my guess 
is as good as any.
I would probably look at HHVM, and see what is easy to 
reimplement in D.


So the best approach, if I understand you correctly, would be to 
perform micro-benchmarks on new code that is either D code (with 
a variety of algorithms and/or vibe.d framework code) or HHVM 64 
bit code, and compare (and publish) the results ?

Re: pl0stuff an optimizing pl0 > c transcompiler

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Sunday, 27 December 2015 at 21:13:07 UTC, Stefan Koch wrote:

Hello again.








please feel free to comment or ask questions here.


Hi.

what languages do you plan to support for input and output ?

Re: pl0stuff an optimizing pl0 > c transcompiler

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Tuesday, 29 December 2015 at 00:50:49 UTC, Stefan Koch wrote:



so could it be used to produce D output instead of C ?

Could it be used to parse PHP as input ?


That would probably require implementing a vm.
fancyPars can certainly be used to create a php parser but a 
straightforward translation will not give you good 
performance...


Would you know what is required to get good performance ?

Re: pl0stuff an optimizing pl0 > c transcompiler

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Monday, 28 December 2015 at 16:41:30 UTC, Stefan Koch wrote:

On Monday, 28 December 2015 at 10:45:59 UTC, Nick B wrote:

what languages do you plan to support for input and output ?


I just planned on PL/0 as input and C as output.
It is a simple one-pass (okay 2 pass if you count the 
optimizer) trans-compilation.


There is no middle-end.

And very little verification. Everything that parses will 
produce an c-output.

Which does may or may not compile.

Since PL/0 just one type.
Int

you can get away with anything :)


so could it be used to produce D output instead of C ?

Could it be used to parse PHP as input ?

Re: New D book available for pre-order: D Web Development

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Sunday, 29 November 2015 at 18:24:38 UTC, Kai Nacke wrote:

On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 04:35:47 UTC, Nick_B wrote:




Hi Nick!

Yes, the book will be available in hardcopy.

Proposed publication date is January 2016.

Regards,
Kai



Kai - Are you saying that the hardcopy will be available Jan 2016 
?


Nick

Re: Implement the "unum" representation in D ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 17 September 2015 at 23:53:30 UTC, Anthony Di Franco 
wrote:




I read the whole book and did not regret it at all, but I was 
already looking for good interval arithmetic implementations. I 
found that the techniques are not too different (though 
improved in important ways) from what is mainstream in verified 
computing.


 It would seem to depend on how much people want the

standard library to support verified numerical computing.



Anthony

Good to know that you enjoyed reading the book.

Can you describe what YOU mean by 'verified numerical computing', 
as I could not find a good description of it, and why is it 
important to have it.


Nick

OT: Hack (Type design features to improve legibility in the harsh conditions of the screen)

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

an interesting set of features

http://sourcefoundry.org/hack/

destroy ?

Nick


.

Re: Rant after trying Rust a bit

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 23 July 2015 at 06:46:14 UTC, ponce wrote:

I've not used Rust, but don't plan to.

On Wednesday, 22 July 2015 at 18:47:33 UTC, simendsjo wrote:
While code.dlang.org has 530 packages, crates.io has 2610 
packages,


I think this tells something foremost about the size of the 
community. More people leads to more code.





But does it reflect the size of the community? Look at these 
numbers, below.

D is ranked no 26, Rust is not in the top 50 !!

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Nick

Re: Implement the unum representation in D ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 13 July 2015 at 21:25:12 UTC, Per Nordlöw wrote:

Can we do anything useful with unums in numeric algorithms if 
only have forward or bidirectional access? Similar to 
algorithms such as Levenshtein that are compatible with UTF-8 
and UTF-16, Andrei? :)


Question for Andrei, above, if he would like to reply.

Re: Implement the unum representation in D ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 12 July 2015 at 03:52:32 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

On Saturday, 11 July 2015 at 03:02:24 UTC, Nick B wrote:


FYI

John Gustafson book is now out:


I wouldn't have known about this way to deal with it if you 
hadn't bumped this thread. So thanks, it's interesting (not 
sure if this book will adequately address Walter's original 
concern that it won't really reduce power consumption). I also 
found the discussion of rational numbers earlier in the thread 
interesting.


I glad that you guys have found this interesting :)

Nick

Re: Implement the unum representation in D ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 20 February 2014 at 10:10:13 UTC, Nick B wrote:


Hi everyone.



John Gustafson Will be presenting a Keynote on Thursday 27th 
February at 11:00 am


The abstract is here:  
http://openparallel.com/multicore-world-2014/speakers/john-gustafson/


There is also a excellent background paper, (PDF - 64 pages) 
which can be found here:




FYI

John Gustafson book is now out:

It can be found here:

http://www.amazon.com/End-Error-Computing-Chapman-Computational/dp/1482239868/ref=sr_1_1?s=booksie=UTF8qid=1436582956sr=1-1keywords=John+Gustafsonpebp=1436583212284perid=093TDC82KFP9Y4S5PXPY


Here is one of the reviewers comments:

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

This book is revolutionary
By David Jefferson on April 18, 2015

This book is revolutionary. That is the only way to describe it. 
I have been a professional computer science researcher for almost 
40 years, and only once or twice before have I seen a book that 
is destined to make such a profound change in the way we think 
about computation. It is hard to imagine that after 70 years or 
so of computer arithmetic that there is anything new to say about 
it, but this book reinvents the subject from the ground up, from 
the very notion of finite precision numbers to their bit-level 
representation, through the basic arithmetic operations, the 
calculation of elementary functions, all the way to the 
fundamental methods of numerical analysis, including completely 
new approaches to expression calculation, root finding, and the 
solution of differential equations. On every page from the 
beginning to the end of the book there are surprises that just 
astonished me, making me re-think material that I thought had 
been settled for decades.


The methods described in this book are profoundly different from 
all previous treatments of numerical methods. Unum arithmetic is 
an extension of floating point arithmetic, but mathematically 
much cleaner. It never does rounding, so there is no rounding 
error. It handles what in floating point arithmetic is called 
overflow and underflow in a far more natural and correct way 
that makes them normal rather than exceptional. It also handles 
exceptional values (NaN, +infinity, -infinity) cleanly and 
consistently. Those contributions alone would have been a 
profound contribution. But the book does much more.


One of the reasons I think the book is revolutionary is that 
unum-based numerical methods can effortlessly provide provable 
bounds on the error in numerical computation, something that is 
very rare for methods based on floating point calculations. And 
the bounds are generally as tight as possible (or as tight as you 
want them), rather than the useless or trivial bounds as often 
happens with floating point methods or even interval arithmetic 
methods.


Another reason I consider the book revolutionary is that many of 
the unum-based methods are cleanly parallelizable, even for 
problems that are normally considered to be unavoidably 
sequential. This was completely unexpected.


A third reason is that in most cases unum arithmetic uses fewer 
bits, and thus less power, storage, and bandwidth (the most 
precious resources in today’s computers) than the comparable 
floating point calculation. It hard to believe that we get this 
advantage in addition to all of the others, but it is amply 
demonstrated in the book. Doing efficient unum arithmetic takes 
more logic (e.g. transistors) than comparable floating point 
arithmetic does, but as the author points out, transistors are so 
cheap today that that hardly matters, especially when compared to 
the other benefits.


Some of the broader themes of the book are counterintuitive to 
people like me advanced conventional training, so that I have to 
re-think everything I “knew” before. For example, the discussion 
of just what it means to “solve” an equation numerically is 
extraordinarily thought provoking. Another example is the 
author’s extended discussion of how calculus is not the best 
inspiration for computational numerical methods, even for 
problems that would seem to absolutely require calculus-based 
thinking, such as the solution of ordinary differential equations.


Not only is the content of the book brilliant, but so is the 
presentation. The text is so well written, a mix of clarity, 
precision, and reader friendliness that it is a pure pleasure to 
read, rather then the dense struggle that mathematical textbooks 
usually require of the reader. But in addition, almost every page 
has full color graphics and diagrams that are completely 
compelling in their ability to clearly communicate the ideas. I 
cannot think of any technical book I have ever seen that is so 
beautifully illustrated all the way through.


I should add that I read the Kindle edition on an iPad, and for 
once Amazon did not screw up the presentation of a technical 
book, at least for this platform. It is beautifully produced, in 
full color and 

Re: Stable partition3 implementation

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 10 July 2015 at 00:39:16 UTC, Xinok wrote:

On Thursday, 9 July 2015 at 21:57:39 UTC, Xinok wrote:
I found this paper which describes an in-place algorithm with 
O(n) time complexity but it's over my head at the moment.



[snip]

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.25.5554rep=rep1type=pdf


from the pdf, above, in case readers, like me, don't know the 
context of a Stable Partition implementation:


Stable minimum space partitioning
in linear time
Jyrki Katajainen1 and Tomi Pasanen2

Abstract.
In the stable 0-1 sorting problem the task is to sort an array of 
n elements with
two distinct values such that equal elements retain their 
relative input order.
Recently, Munro, Raman and Salowe [BIT 1990] gave an algorithm 
which solves

this problem in O(nlog*n)
3 time and constant extra space. We show that by a
modification of their method the stable 0-1 sorting is possible 
in O(n) time and
O(1) extra space. Stable three-way partitioning can be reduced to 
stable 0-1
sorting. This immediately yields a stable minimum space 
quicksort, which sorts

multisets in asymptotically optimal time with high probability.
CR categories: E.5, F.2.2.

The stable 0-1 sorting problem is defined as follows: Given an 
array of n elements
and a function f mapping each element to the set {0,1}, the task 
is to rearrange the
elements such that all elements, whose f-value is zero, become 
before elements, whose
f-value is one. Moreover, the relative order of elements with 
equal f-values should be
maintained. For the sake of simplicity, we hereafter refer to 
bits instead of the f-values

of elements.

Stable partitioning is a special case of stable 0-1 sorting, 
where the f-values are

obtained by comparing every element xi
to some pivot element xj  (which will not take part in 
partitioning):

Re: PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 25 June 2015 at 13:48:38 UTC, Etienne wrote:

On Wednesday, 24 June 2015 at 05:34:08 UTC, Nick B wrote:

On Tuesday, 23 June 2015 at 11:22:40 UTC, Etienne Cimon wrote:




Thanks for the responses and your details replies.
I'm going to talk to the CEO of the company described, at the 
beginning of this long thread, and find out they are willing 
to consider a proof of concept web site based on your work.
This could take a couple of weeks.  What is the best way to 
get in touch with you if I have more questions ?


Nick


Skype: Etcimon or gmail the same username


Thanks again.

Nick

Re: PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 23 June 2015 at 11:22:40 UTC, Etienne Cimon wrote:



Nick


I don't have current performance results because I've been 
focused on adding features, but these results were taken on a 
previous version:


https://atilanevesoncode.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/go-vs-d-vs-erlang-vs-c-in-real-life-mqtt-broker-implementation-shootout/


Etienne

Thanks for the responses and your details replies.
I'm going to talk to the CEO of the company described, at the 
beginning of this long thread, and find out they are willing to 
consider a proof of concept web site based on your work.
This could take a couple of weeks.  What is the best way to get 
in touch with you if I have more questions ?


Nick

Re: PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 03:44:08 UTC, Etienne Cimon wrote:

So now I can build a full web application/server executable in 
less than 2mb packed, and it runs faster than anything out 
there.


Etienne

Do you have an performance numbers, as to how fast your web 
application/server is, or is this based on your personal 
experience ?


Nick

Re: PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 03:44:08 UTC, Etienne Cimon wrote:

On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 18:40:01 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
 Any idea how far away it might be from being something that 
someone could use in an enterprise environment simply, in the 
same kind of way that vibed is easy?  I appreciate that making 
it broadly usable may not be what interests you, and may be a 
project for someone else.


I would say 3 months. So it'll probably be a year considering 
how off my last estimates were. Of course, I never calculated 
any help (and haven't gotten any really)




Etienne

Would you like to detail what still needs to be completed/on the 
to-do list  ?


What would be the best way to learn it ?

Does it need documentation as well ?

Nick

Re: PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 19 June 2015 at 11:28:30 UTC, Etienne Cimon wrote:

On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 05:23:25 UTC, Nick B wrote:

On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 03:44:08 UTC, Etienne Cimon wrote:




Will you explain how it is different to Vibe.d ?


It has HTTP/2, a new encryption library, it uses a native TCP 
event library, lots of refactoring. In short, the entire thing 
is in D rather than linking with OpenSSL and libevent.



Etienne

Can you explain the benefits of writing these libraries in D, as 
against just linking to  these libraries. Is it for faster 
execution, or better debugging, or some other reason ?

Re: PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 05:23:25 UTC, Nick B wrote:

On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 03:44:08 UTC, Etienne Cimon wrote:
On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 18:40:01 UTC, Laeeth Isharc 
wrote:
 Any idea how far away it might be from being something that 
someone could use in an enterprise environment simply, in the 
same kind of way that vibed is easy?  I appreciate that 
making it broadly usable may not be what interests you, and 
may be a project for someone else.


I would say 3 months. So it'll probably be a year considering 
how off my last estimates were.


Etienne -
Interesting back story.





So now I can build a full web application/server executable in 
less than 2mb packed, and it runs faster than anything out 
there. It's standalone, works cross-platform, etc.


Will you explain how it is different to Vibe.d ?


Thanks everyone for their suggestions.

Thanks Etienne on the heads-up on your new web application/server 
executable.


If anyone wants to add any final comments they are most welcome.

Nick

Re: PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 03:44:08 UTC, Etienne Cimon wrote:

On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 18:40:01 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
 Any idea how far away it might be from being something that 
someone could use in an enterprise environment simply, in the 
same kind of way that vibed is easy?  I appreciate that making 
it broadly usable may not be what interests you, and may be a 
project for someone else.


I would say 3 months. So it'll probably be a year considering 
how off my last estimates were.


Etienne -
Interesting back story.

Will this be under a Boost licence ?

Will you provide a link ?



Even the vibe.d library was much more advanced than what I 
could find with an open source license that allowed static 
compilation at the time (1 yr 1/2 ago), so I went forward with 
that and worked my way through.


[snip\]


So now I can build a full web application/server executable in 
less than 2mb packed, and it runs faster than anything out 
there. It's standalone, works cross-platform, etc.


Will you explain how it is different to Vibe.d ?

Re: PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 18:40:01 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 16:28:42 UTC, Etienne wrote:
I've been working on developing the entire Web Stack in D, 
down from the kernel to the multiplexed HTTP/2 protocol and 
the high-level framework that queries the database and serves 
the response in json.


Your work looks very interesting, although I haven't used it 
yet.
 Any idea how far away it might be from being something that 
someone could use in an enterprise environment simply, in the 
same kind of way that vibed is easy?  I appreciate that making 
it broadly usable may not be what interests you, and may be a 
project for someone else.



If I did so at a high personal investment cost, it was so 
those insane web development languages wouldn't bother me 
anymore. In D, if you have a bug, you are 100% certain that 
you can resolve it yourself. You have all the C/C++ tools 
available to go all the way down to the memory and debug 
anything you want. You have statically typed language that 
allows huge projects to breathe very healthy and increment 
features at low cost.


Nothing beats D in my opinion. It's 20 years ahead of 
everything out there. All you need to do, is know how to use 
it and understand it enough to resolve any bugs you come up 
with.


Any chance you could write a bit more on this?  Your personal 
story and why you believe this.


Yes I too would be interested on more background as to your 
opinion, as why its 20 years ahead of everything else out there.

Re: PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 16 June 2015 at 06:29:46 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:

On 16/06/2015 11:53 a.m., Nick B wrote:

Hi.

There is a startup in New Zealand that I have some dealings 
with at

present. Any comments or suggestions on the above?


Hello follow Kiwi!


Hello kiwi from the south Island. :)

Re: PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 04:51:44 UTC, Rikki Cattermole 
wrote:

On 17/06/2015 6:41 a.m., Nick B wrote:

On Tuesday, 16 June 2015 at 06:29:46 UTC, Rikki Cattermole




Oh please say Christchurch!


sorry for the confusion. Its Wellington.

Re: PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 16 June 2015 at 08:47:40 UTC, John Colvin wrote:

On Monday, 15 June 2015 at 23:53:06 UTC, Nick B wrote:

Hi.


Any comments or suggestions on the above?


Both C# and D sound like good fits there. It depends on whether 
it's the sort of team who like to innovate and explore new 
possibilities or whether they want a completely fleshed out, 
stable ecosystem.



Is anyone else able to comment on the comparisions/differences 
between C#.Net  D ??

Any comments on cost ?
Any comments on getting bugs fixed ?

PHP verses C#.NET verses D.

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

Hi.

There is a startup in New Zealand that I have some dealings with 
at present. They have build most of their original code in PHP, 
(as this was quick and easy) but they also use some C#.net for 
interfacing to accounting appls on clients machines. The core PHP 
application runs in the cloud at present and talks to accountings 
applications in the cloud. They use the PHP symfony framework.


High speed in not important, but accuracy, error handling, and 
scalability is, as they are processing accounting transactions. 
They have a new CEO on board, and he would like to review the 
companies technical direction.


Their client base is small but growing quickly.  I know that PHP 
is not a great language, and my knowledge of D is reasonable, 
while I have poor knowledge of C#.net.


Looking to the future, as volumes grow, they could:
1.  Stay with PHP  C#.net, and bring on servers as volumes grow.
2.  Migrate to C#.net in time
3.  Migrate to D in time.

Any comments or suggestions on the above?

Re: Interrogative: What's a good blog title?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 27 April 2015 at 23:44:51 UTC, Nick B wrote:

On Monday, 27 April 2015 at 23:33:15 UTC, Justin Whear wrote:

On Mon, 27 Apr 2015 23:30:11 +, Anonymouse wrote:

assumeBlog


Or perhaps, getting D-syntax specific, assumeUnique(wisdom)


How about '[A] Research Scientist Musings' ?


Has there been a decision ?

Re: Interrogative: What's a good blog title?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 27 April 2015 at 23:33:15 UTC, Justin Whear wrote:

On Mon, 27 Apr 2015 23:30:11 +, Anonymouse wrote:

assumeBlog


Or perhaps, getting D-syntax specific, assumeUnique(wisdom)


How about '[A] Research Scientist Musings' ?

Re: Valgrind

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Monday, 20 April 2015 at 17:25:55 UTC, John Colvin wrote:

On Monday, 20 April 2015 at 16:58:18 UTC, Robert M. Münch wrote:

On 2015-04-20 13:29:57 +, John Colvin said:






Were the causes ever analyzed? I'm a bit wondering why it 
happens on floating point stuff...


valgrind doesn't have full support for x87 code, which dmd 
emits all over the place.


There is company is Germany, which does Valgrind consultancy,

http://www.open-works.net/contact.html

which could fix this issue, if you are prepared to throw some 
money their way.


Nick

Re: Today's programming challenge - How's your Range-Fu ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 20 April 2015 at 03:39:54 UTC, ketmar wrote:

On Mon, 20 Apr 2015 01:27:36 +, Nick B wrote:


Perhaps Unicode needs to be rebuild from the ground up ?


alas, it's too late. now we'll live with that unicode crap 
for many

years.


Perhaps. or perhaps not. This community got together under Walter 
and Andrei leadership to building a new programming language, on 
the pillars of the old.

Perhaps a new Unicode standard, could start that way as well ?

Re: Today's programming challenge - How's your Range-Fu ?

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 19 April 2015 at 19:58:28 UTC, ketmar wrote:

On Sun, 19 Apr 2015 07:54:36 +, John Colvin wrote:



it's not crazy, it's just broken in all possible ways:
http://file.bestmx.net/ee/articles/uni_vs_code.pdf


Ketmar

Great link, and a really good arguement about the problems with 
Unicode.


Quote from 'Instead of Conclusion'

Yes. This is the root of Unicode misdesign. They mixed up two 
mutually exclusive
approaches. They blended badly two different abstraction levels: 
the textual level which
corresponds to a language idea and the graphical level which does 
not care of a language, yet

cares of writing direction, subscripts, superscripts and so on.

In other words we need two different Unicodes built on these two 
opposite principles,

instead of the one built on an insane mix of controversial axioms.

end quote.

Perhaps Unicode needs to be rebuild from the ground up ?

Re: DConf 2015 Schedule published

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Monday, 23 March 2015 at 16:47:30 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
wrote:

Dconf 2015's programme is on! http://dconf.org/2015/index.html


  We're operating at a loss to keep
registration costs low, and chose a location that is accessible 
and affordable.


Take the schedule to your employer or academic advisor and ask 
them if you can attend!



Andrei


Perhaps you might want to ask for a nominal amount to cover
putting up the content on the web after the conference ?

Nick

Re: Thoughts on replacement languages (Reddit + D)

[Nick B via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 22:55:52 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

On 1/11/15 2:54 PM, Nick B wrote:
On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 17:44:59 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:




Ionno how to measure that with the data we have. -- Andrei


Perhaps its better to have a number (average or mean) than no 
number.  Just ask 50 or 100 uers (or more) for their number of 
downloads for the last 12 or 18 months. This is turn will give 
you a guess-estimate as to the size of the community. If the 
number is small, say 4, then this will indicate that the 
community is near 100,000 users.


Nick