Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Robin Becker]

On 20/09/2017 10:54, Chris Angelico wrote:



What, you take silicon that someone else created?!

ChrisA

well I had germanium for flipflops and dekatron tubes with neon for counters 
never built anything digital with valves though

--
Robin Becker

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Re: Even Older Man Yells at Whippersnappers

[Stephan Houben]

Op 2017-09-21, Thomas Jollans schreef :
> On 2017-09-19 20:21, Stefan Ram wrote:
>> I do not use UTF-8
>> 
>
> Why on earth not?!

Even *More* Older Man Yells at UTF-8?
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Re: Even Older Man Yells at Whippersnappers

[Thomas Jollans]

On 2017-09-19 20:21, Stefan Ram wrote:
> I do not use UTF-8
> 

Why on earth not?!

-- 
Thomas Jollans

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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Grant Edwards]

On 2017-09-20, Gregory Ewing  wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:
>> Alternatively, you should design an instruction set and implement it
>> using microcode and AM2900 bit-slice processors.
>
> AMD2900? That's cheating! You should design and build your
> own logic gates. After refining the silicon to make the
> transistors first, of course.

Digging up the sand with your bare hands, no doubt. ;)

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! In 1962, you could buy
  at   a pair of SHARKSKIN SLACKS,
  gmail.comwith a "Continental Belt,"
   for $10.99!!

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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Grant Edwards]

On 2017-09-19, Christopher Reimer  wrote:

> Is assembly still a thing today? 

Depends on what you're doing.  If you're working with custom-designed
boards, you often have to write some assembly for startup and
interrupt stuff.  If you're porting an OS kernel to a new
architecture, you have to write some assembly.

> I wanted to take assembly in college but I was the only student who
> showed up and the class got cancelled. I dabbled with 8-but assembly
> as a kid. I can't imagine what assembly is on a 64-bit processor.

On a decent processor (ARM, Power, SPARC) it's fine (in some wasy
simpler and easier than on many 8-bit processors).  On x86_64 it's a
mess -- just like it was a mess on x86 (and to a large extent on
8086).

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! So this is what it
  at   feels like to be potato
  gmail.comsalad

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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Ben Bacarisse]

Larry Martell  writes:

> On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 12:12 PM, Rhodri James  wrote:
>> 
>> Eh, my school never 'ad an electronics class, nor a computer neither. Made
>> programming a bit tricky; we 'ad to write programs on a form and send 'em
>> off to next county.  None of this new-fangled VHDL neither, we 'ad to do our
>> simulations with paper and pencil.
>> 
>
> We dreamed of writing programs on a form. We had to make Hollerith
> punch cards by hand using a dull knife. You tell that to the kids of
> today and they won't believe you.

Dull knife, was it?  Luxury!  We had to dab at card wi' tongue 'till it
were wet enough to punch with a whittled stick.

-- 
Ben.
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[justin walters]

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 7:29 AM, Larry Martell 
wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 5:09 AM, Gregory Ewing
>  wrote:
> >
> > Never mind that fake assembly rubbish, learn a real assembly
> > language! And hand-assemble it and toggle it into the front
> > panel switches like I did!
>
> 1979, I was working at Bausch and Lomb in Rochester NY. We had a 16
> bit Data General Nova 'Minicomputer'. It had 4 registers, called
> accumulators. It had 16 front panel toggle switches, one for each bit,
> one that said 'deposit', and one that said run. It had a dial with
> stops for AC0, AC1, AC2, AC3 (for the 4 accumulators), PC (program
> counter), address and contents.
>
> When you powered up the machine it did not boot. You had to hand enter
> a short bootstrap program in binary. Do to this you had to turn the
> dial to address, key in a 16 bit address, click deposit, turn the dial
> to contents, key in a 16 bit line of assembly code, click deposit, and
> repeat this for each line of code (there were like 5 or 6). Then key
> in the address of where you wanted to run from turn the dial to PC,
> deposit, and click run. Any mistake and it would not boot. Often took
> 3 or 4 tries.
>
> After a few weeks of this I was sick of it. I had the boot code burned
> into an EEPROM (which I had to send out to be programmed). Then I
> build a very small wire wrapped board with the EEPROM and an
> oscillator and few TTL chips. I tapped into the 5V power on the CPU
> board and used the leading edge of that to trigger a one shot which
> 'woke up' my circuit, and caused it to clock out the code from the
> EEPROM and load it to the appropriate place, set the program counter
> and start the program. I drilled holes in the CPU board and mounted
> this with little plastic standoffs.
>
> I did this all on my own, coming in on the weekends, without company
> approval, and when it was working I showed my boss. He was blown away
> and he was sure we could patent this and sell it. He had me formalize
> the design, write it up, have an actual PCB made, go to the company
> lawyers, the whole 9 yards. Then Data General announced the new
> version of the Nova  with auto boot.
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>


That's crazy!

The oldest computer I ever owned was a 1984 Tandy 1000. I actually still
miss that thing.

It had an option where you could change the 8-bit music that played on
startup.

Luckily for me, it took 5.25" floppys.
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Larry Martell]

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 5:09 AM, Gregory Ewing
 wrote:
>
> Never mind that fake assembly rubbish, learn a real assembly
> language! And hand-assemble it and toggle it into the front
> panel switches like I did!

1979, I was working at Bausch and Lomb in Rochester NY. We had a 16
bit Data General Nova 'Minicomputer'. It had 4 registers, called
accumulators. It had 16 front panel toggle switches, one for each bit,
one that said 'deposit', and one that said run. It had a dial with
stops for AC0, AC1, AC2, AC3 (for the 4 accumulators), PC (program
counter), address and contents.

When you powered up the machine it did not boot. You had to hand enter
a short bootstrap program in binary. Do to this you had to turn the
dial to address, key in a 16 bit address, click deposit, turn the dial
to contents, key in a 16 bit line of assembly code, click deposit, and
repeat this for each line of code (there were like 5 or 6). Then key
in the address of where you wanted to run from turn the dial to PC,
deposit, and click run. Any mistake and it would not boot. Often took
3 or 4 tries.

After a few weeks of this I was sick of it. I had the boot code burned
into an EEPROM (which I had to send out to be programmed). Then I
build a very small wire wrapped board with the EEPROM and an
oscillator and few TTL chips. I tapped into the 5V power on the CPU
board and used the leading edge of that to trigger a one shot which
'woke up' my circuit, and caused it to clock out the code from the
EEPROM and load it to the appropriate place, set the program counter
and start the program. I drilled holes in the CPU board and mounted
this with little plastic standoffs.

I did this all on my own, coming in on the weekends, without company
approval, and when it was working I showed my boss. He was blown away
and he was sure we could patent this and sell it. He had me formalize
the design, write it up, have an actual PCB made, go to the company
lawyers, the whole 9 yards. Then Data General announced the new
version of the Nova  with auto boot.
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 20 September 2017 05:09:53 Gregory Ewing wrote:

> Rhodri James wrote:
> > Tsk.  You should have learned (a fake simplified) assembler first,
>
> Never mind that fake assembly rubbish, learn a real assembly
> language! And hand-assemble it and toggle it into the front
> panel switches like I did!
>
> --
> Greg

So did I Greg, except the cosmac super elf I started on, at least had a 
hex monitor for an os.  This was in 1978. Wrote a commercial preparation 
utility for an automatic station break machine when I was at KRCR-TV in 
Redding CA. I of course went on down the road in due time.  

Fast fwd 15 years, I'd changed women and was then the CE at WDTV-5 here 
in WV, but had some vacation time so we flew back to Oregon to visit an 
aunt who was running out of time.  While "in the neighborhood" I called 
the tv station and found that my gismo was still in several times a day 
use.  Thats an eon or two in a stations tech equipment time.

Funny part is that the next spring, at the annual NAB show in Lost Wages, 
I spotted the makings of a similar device in the Microtime booth, and 
commented that mine could do this and that that theirs couldn't. 
Microtime was rather famous for having more lawyers than engineers. The 
product disappeared from the display, and was never seen or admitted to 
even exist again.  So I was the only one to ever do that particular job, 
no one ever did anything similar, but back in the days when tv stations 
below the top 25 were all running Sony 3/4" u-matic video Tape machines, 
the image quality lost in making a copy was substantial, and my gismo 
saved a one generation copy that  markedly improved the image quality of 
our commercial breaks.  Thats good for Nielson ratings, 2 points in the 
next book, at a market 162 station.

The average General Manager would kill for a 2 point better Nielson book.
And I had fun doing it!

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 09:50 pm, Steve D'Aprano wrote:

> On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 07:12 pm, Gregory Ewing wrote:
> 
>> Grant Edwards wrote:
>>> Alternatively, you should design an instruction set and implement it
>>> using microcode and AM2900 bit-slice processors.
>> 
>> AMD2900? That's cheating! You should design and build your
>> own logic gates. After refining the silicon to make the
>> transistors first, of course.
> 
> Silicon? You had it easy.
> 
> In my day all we had was hydrogen and helium, we had to make our own silicon
> using fusion.

Of course, when I say all we had was hydrogen and helium, I mean we had to make
it first from a quark/gluon plasma. Won't catch us using somebody else's
substandard silicon. Probably use the wrong electron charge and all.

Of course you don't get quark/gluon plasma like that any more. You can't get the
magnetic monopoles.




-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.

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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 07:12 pm, Gregory Ewing wrote:

> Grant Edwards wrote:
>> Alternatively, you should design an instruction set and implement it
>> using microcode and AM2900 bit-slice processors.
> 
> AMD2900? That's cheating! You should design and build your
> own logic gates. After refining the silicon to make the
> transistors first, of course.

Silicon? You had it easy.

In my day all we had was hydrogen and helium, we had to make our own silicon
using fusion.



-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.

-- 
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 7:12 PM, Gregory Ewing
 wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:
>>
>> Alternatively, you should design an instruction set and implement it
>> using microcode and AM2900 bit-slice processors.
>
>
> AMD2900? That's cheating! You should design and build your
> own logic gates. After refining the silicon to make the
> transistors first, of course.

What, you take silicon that someone else created?!

ChrisA
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Gregory Ewing]

Grant Edwards wrote:

Alternatively, you should design an instruction set and implement it
using microcode and AM2900 bit-slice processors.


AMD2900? That's cheating! You should design and build your
own logic gates. After refining the silicon to make the
transistors first, of course.

--
Greg
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Gregory Ewing]

Rhodri James wrote:

Tsk.  You should have learned (a fake simplified) assembler first,


Never mind that fake assembly rubbish, learn a real assembly
language! And hand-assemble it and toggle it into the front
panel switches like I did!

--
Greg
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Re: Even Older Man Yells at Whippersnappers

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 19 September 2017 13:38:42 ROGER GRAYDON CHRISTMAN wrote:

>  I recall giving a quiz to my college students sometime back around
> the late nineties which had a little bit of arithmetic involved in the
> answer. It's been too long ago to still have the exact details, but I
> remember a couple solutions that would be of the form:
>
> 5 + 10 + 1*2
>
> And then the student would write he was unable to actually
> compute that without a calculator.   And yes, I deliberately
> designed the questions to have such easy numbers to work with.
>
> Roger Christman
> Pennsylvania State University

Why do we buy them books and send them to school?

Yes, that is a real question. We ought to be suing the schools for 
malpractice.  And the parents for child abuse because they didn't see to 
it the child was being properly taught. I know from raising some of 
those questions at a school board meeting, occasioned by my trying to 
act like a parent when I took on a woman with 3 children fathered by a 
myotonic muscular dystrophy victim. Those offspring typically have a 30 
year lifespan so they are long passed now.

And being told they have to follow the federal recipes.  So who the hell 
do we sue to put some "education" back into the classroom?  The only way 
we'll fix it is to cost the decision makers their salaries.  And we 
start that by talking to the candidates, and voting them in or out 
accordingly in those regions where they are elected.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[MRAB]

On 2017-09-19 17:46, Larry Martell wrote:

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 12:12 PM, Rhodri James  wrote:


Eh, my school never 'ad an electronics class, nor a computer neither. Made
programming a bit tricky; we 'ad to write programs on a form and send 'em
off to next county.  None of this new-fangled VHDL neither, we 'ad to do our
simulations with paper and pencil.



We dreamed of writing programs on a form. We had to make Hollerith
punch cards by hand using a dull knife. You tell that to the kids of
today and they won't believe you.


You had a _knife_?
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[MRAB]

On 2017-09-19 19:15, Christopher Reimer wrote:

On Sep 19, 2017, at 9:09 AM, justin walters  wrote:

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 8:59 AM, Grant Edwards 
wrote:


On 2017-09-19, Rhodri James  wrote:

On 19/09/17 16:00, Stefan Ram wrote:
D'Arcy Cain  writes:

of course, I use calculators and computers but I still understand the
theory behind what I am doing.


  I started out programming in BASIC. Today, I use Python,
  the BASIC of the 21st century. Python has no GOTO, but when
  it is executed, its for loop eventually is implemented using
  a GOTO-like jump instruction. Thanks to my learning of BASIC,
  /I/ can have this insight. Younger people, who never learned
  GOTO, may still be able to use Python, but they will not
  understand what is going on behind the curtains. Therefore, for
  a profound understanding of Python, everyone should learn BASIC
  first, just like I did!


Tsk.  You should have learned (a fake simplified) assembler first, then
you'd have an appreciation of what your processor actually did.

:-)


Tsk, Tsk.  Before learning assembly, you should design an instruction
set and implement it in hardare.  Or at least run in in a VHDL
simulator.  [Actually, back in my undergrad days we used AHPL and
implemented something like a simplified PDP-11 ISA.]

Alternatively, you should design an instruction set and implement it
using microcode and AM2900 bit-slice processors.

--
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! Could I have a drug
 at   overdose?
 gmail.com

--
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Even Assembly is easy nowadays:
https://fresh.flatassembler.net/index.cgi?page=content/1_screenshots.txt
--
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Is assembly still a thing today?

I wanted to take assembly in college but I was the only student who showed up 
and the class got cancelled. I dabbled with 8-but assembly as a kid. I can't 
imagine what assembly is on a 64-bit processor.

Assembler? I started out on a hex keypad. I still remember that hex C4 
was LDI.


Assembler on, say, a 6502 or ARM is pretty nice! :-)
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Christopher Reimer]

> On Sep 19, 2017, at 9:09 AM, justin walters  
> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 8:59 AM, Grant Edwards 
> wrote:
> 
>>> On 2017-09-19, Rhodri James  wrote:
 On 19/09/17 16:00, Stefan Ram wrote:
 D'Arcy Cain  writes:
> of course, I use calculators and computers but I still understand the
> theory behind what I am doing.
 
   I started out programming in BASIC. Today, I use Python,
   the BASIC of the 21st century. Python has no GOTO, but when
   it is executed, its for loop eventually is implemented using
   a GOTO-like jump instruction. Thanks to my learning of BASIC,
   /I/ can have this insight. Younger people, who never learned
   GOTO, may still be able to use Python, but they will not
   understand what is going on behind the curtains. Therefore, for
   a profound understanding of Python, everyone should learn BASIC
   first, just like I did!
>>> 
>>> Tsk.  You should have learned (a fake simplified) assembler first, then
>>> you'd have an appreciation of what your processor actually did.
>>> 
>>> :-)
>> 
>> Tsk, Tsk.  Before learning assembly, you should design an instruction
>> set and implement it in hardare.  Or at least run in in a VHDL
>> simulator.  [Actually, back in my undergrad days we used AHPL and
>> implemented something like a simplified PDP-11 ISA.]
>> 
>> Alternatively, you should design an instruction set and implement it
>> using microcode and AM2900 bit-slice processors.
>> 
>> --
>> Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! Could I have a drug
>>  at   overdose?
>>  gmail.com
>> 
>> --
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>> 
> 
> Even Assembly is easy nowadays:
> https://fresh.flatassembler.net/index.cgi?page=content/1_screenshots.txt
> -- 
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Is assembly still a thing today? 

I wanted to take assembly in college but I was the only student who showed up 
and the class got cancelled. I dabbled with 8-but assembly as a kid. I can't 
imagine what assembly is on a 64-bit processor.

Chris R. 
-- 
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Re: Even Older Man Yells at Whippersnappers

[Rhodri James]

On 19/09/17 19:33, Larry Martell wrote:

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 1:38 PM, ROGER GRAYDON CHRISTMAN  wrote:

  I recall giving a quiz to my college students sometime back around
the late nineties which had a little bit of arithmetic involved in the answer.
It's been too long ago to still have the exact details, but I remember
a couple solutions that would be of the form:

5 + 10 + 1*2

And then the student would write he was unable to actually
compute that without a calculator.   And yes, I deliberately
designed the questions to have such easy numbers to work with.


It was my birthday the other day. People at worked asked how old I
was. I replied:

((3**2)+math.sqrt(400))*2

Quite a few people somehow came up with 47. And these are technical people.


You obviously look very spry for your age.

--
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd
--
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Re: Even Older Man Yells at Whippersnappers

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 4:33 AM, Larry Martell  wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 1:38 PM, ROGER GRAYDON CHRISTMAN  wrote:
>>  I recall giving a quiz to my college students sometime back around
>> the late nineties which had a little bit of arithmetic involved in the 
>> answer.
>> It's been too long ago to still have the exact details, but I remember
>> a couple solutions that would be of the form:
>>
>> 5 + 10 + 1*2
>>
>> And then the student would write he was unable to actually
>> compute that without a calculator.   And yes, I deliberately
>> designed the questions to have such easy numbers to work with.
>
> It was my birthday the other day. People at worked asked how old I
> was. I replied:
>
> ((3**2)+math.sqrt(400))*2
>
> Quite a few people somehow came up with 47. And these are technical people.

*headscratch* Multiple people got 47? I'm struggling to figure that
out. If they interpret the first part as multiplication (3*2 => 6),
that would get 26*2 => 52; if they don't understand the square
rooting, they'd probably just give up; if they ignore the parentheses,
that could give 9 + 20*2 => 49; but I can't come up with 47.

ChrisA
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Re: Even Older Man Yells at Whippersnappers

[Larry Martell]

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 1:38 PM, ROGER GRAYDON CHRISTMAN  wrote:
>  I recall giving a quiz to my college students sometime back around
> the late nineties which had a little bit of arithmetic involved in the answer.
> It's been too long ago to still have the exact details, but I remember
> a couple solutions that would be of the form:
>
> 5 + 10 + 1*2
>
> And then the student would write he was unable to actually
> compute that without a calculator.   And yes, I deliberately
> designed the questions to have such easy numbers to work with.

It was my birthday the other day. People at worked asked how old I
was. I replied:

((3**2)+math.sqrt(400))*2

Quite a few people somehow came up with 47. And these are technical people.
-- 
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Rhodri James]

On 19/09/17 17:52, justin walters wrote:

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 9:12 AM, Rhodri James  wrote:



Eh, my school never 'ad an electronics class, nor a computer neither. Made
programming a bit tricky; we 'ad to write programs on a form and send 'em
off to next county.  None of this new-fangled VHDL neither, we 'ad to do
our simulations with paper and pencil.


(All true, as it happens.  My school acquired a computer (just the one: a
NorthStar Horizon) in my O-Level year, but before that we really did have
to send programs off to Worcester where someone would laboriously type them
in for you.  A week later you got a print out of the results and a roll of
paper tape with your program on it.)


What happened if there was a bug? Did you have to re-send it?



Yes.  We proofread our little programs very carefully after the first 
bug :-)


--
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[justin walters]

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 9:12 AM, Rhodri James  wrote:

> On 19/09/17 16:59, Grant Edwards wrote:
>
>> On 2017-09-19, Rhodri James  wrote:
>>
>>> On 19/09/17 16:00, Stefan Ram wrote:
>>>
 D'Arcy Cain  writes:

> of course, I use calculators and computers but I still understand the
> theory behind what I am doing.
>

 I started out programming in BASIC. Today, I use Python,
 the BASIC of the 21st century. Python has no GOTO, but when
 it is executed, its for loop eventually is implemented using
 a GOTO-like jump instruction. Thanks to my learning of BASIC,
 /I/ can have this insight. Younger people, who never learned
 GOTO, may still be able to use Python, but they will not
 understand what is going on behind the curtains. Therefore, for
 a profound understanding of Python, everyone should learn BASIC
 first, just like I did!

>>>
>>> Tsk.  You should have learned (a fake simplified) assembler first, then
>>> you'd have an appreciation of what your processor actually did.
>>>
>>> :-)
>>>
>>
>> Tsk, Tsk.  Before learning assembly, you should design an instruction
>> set and implement it in hardare.  Or at least run in in a VHDL
>> simulator.  [Actually, back in my undergrad days we used AHPL and
>> implemented something like a simplified PDP-11 ISA.]
>>
>
> 
> Eh, my school never 'ad an electronics class, nor a computer neither. Made
> programming a bit tricky; we 'ad to write programs on a form and send 'em
> off to next county.  None of this new-fangled VHDL neither, we 'ad to do
> our simulations with paper and pencil.
> 
>
> (All true, as it happens.  My school acquired a computer (just the one: a
> NorthStar Horizon) in my O-Level year, but before that we really did have
> to send programs off to Worcester where someone would laboriously type them
> in for you.  A week later you got a print out of the results and a roll of
> paper tape with your program on it.)
>
>
> --
> Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>

What happened if there was a bug? Did you have to re-send it?
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Stefan Behnel]

Stefan Ram schrieb am 19.09.2017 um 17:00:
> D'Arcy Cain  writes:
>> of course, I use calculators and computers but I still understand the 
>> theory behind what I am doing.
> 
>   I started out programming in BASIC. Today, I use Python,
>   the BASIC of the 21st century. Python has no GOTO, but when
>   it is executed, its for loop eventually is implemented using
>   a GOTO-like jump instruction. Thanks to my learning of BASIC,
>   /I/ can have this insight. Younger people, who never learned
>   GOTO, may still be able to use Python, but they will not 
>   understand what is going on behind the curtains. Therefore, for
>   a profound understanding of Python, everyone should learn BASIC
>   first, just like I did!

http://entrian.com/goto/

Stefan

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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[justin walters]

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 8:59 AM, Grant Edwards 
wrote:

> On 2017-09-19, Rhodri James  wrote:
> > On 19/09/17 16:00, Stefan Ram wrote:
> >> D'Arcy Cain  writes:
> >>> of course, I use calculators and computers but I still understand the
> >>> theory behind what I am doing.
> >>
> >>I started out programming in BASIC. Today, I use Python,
> >>the BASIC of the 21st century. Python has no GOTO, but when
> >>it is executed, its for loop eventually is implemented using
> >>a GOTO-like jump instruction. Thanks to my learning of BASIC,
> >>/I/ can have this insight. Younger people, who never learned
> >>GOTO, may still be able to use Python, but they will not
> >>understand what is going on behind the curtains. Therefore, for
> >>a profound understanding of Python, everyone should learn BASIC
> >>first, just like I did!
> >
> > Tsk.  You should have learned (a fake simplified) assembler first, then
> > you'd have an appreciation of what your processor actually did.
> >
> >:-)
>
> Tsk, Tsk.  Before learning assembly, you should design an instruction
> set and implement it in hardare.  Or at least run in in a VHDL
> simulator.  [Actually, back in my undergrad days we used AHPL and
> implemented something like a simplified PDP-11 ISA.]
>
> Alternatively, you should design an instruction set and implement it
> using microcode and AM2900 bit-slice processors.
>
> --
> Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! Could I have a drug
>   at   overdose?
>   gmail.com
>
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>

Even Assembly is easy nowadays:
https://fresh.flatassembler.net/index.cgi?page=content/1_screenshots.txt
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Grant Edwards]

On 2017-09-19, Rhodri James  wrote:
> On 19/09/17 16:00, Stefan Ram wrote:
>> D'Arcy Cain  writes:
>>> of course, I use calculators and computers but I still understand the
>>> theory behind what I am doing.
>> 
>>I started out programming in BASIC. Today, I use Python,
>>the BASIC of the 21st century. Python has no GOTO, but when
>>it is executed, its for loop eventually is implemented using
>>a GOTO-like jump instruction. Thanks to my learning of BASIC,
>>/I/ can have this insight. Younger people, who never learned
>>GOTO, may still be able to use Python, but they will not
>>understand what is going on behind the curtains. Therefore, for
>>a profound understanding of Python, everyone should learn BASIC
>>first, just like I did!
>
> Tsk.  You should have learned (a fake simplified) assembler first, then 
> you'd have an appreciation of what your processor actually did.
>
>:-)

Tsk, Tsk.  Before learning assembly, you should design an instruction
set and implement it in hardare.  Or at least run in in a VHDL
simulator.  [Actually, back in my undergrad days we used AHPL and
implemented something like a simplified PDP-11 ISA.]

Alternatively, you should design an instruction set and implement it
using microcode and AM2900 bit-slice processors.
  
-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! Could I have a drug
  at   overdose?
  gmail.com

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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[justin walters]

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 8:00 AM, Stefan Ram  wrote:

> D'Arcy Cain  writes:
> >of course, I use calculators and computers but I still understand the
> >theory behind what I am doing.
>
>   I started out programming in BASIC. Today, I use Python,
>   the BASIC of the 21st century. Python has no GOTO, but when
>   it is executed, its for loop eventually is implemented using
>   a GOTO-like jump instruction. Thanks to my learning of BASIC,
>   /I/ can have this insight. Younger people, who never learned
>   GOTO, may still be able to use Python, but they will not
>   understand what is going on behind the curtains. Therefore, for
>   a profound understanding of Python, everyone should learn BASIC
>   first, just like I did!
>
>   ;-)
>
>
>
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>

As a young person (read: late 20s), the one thing I've learned is that if a
language
has a `GOTO` instruction, it's probably a bad idea to use said instruction.

I'm sure there's exceptions to this rule, but I'm lucky enough to have
better solutions
for calling the same procedure multiple times, i.e. functions.

I always wonder what my "old man yells at cloud" moment will be once I get
older.
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Rhodri James]

On 19/09/17 16:00, Stefan Ram wrote:

D'Arcy Cain  writes:

of course, I use calculators and computers but I still understand the
theory behind what I am doing.


   I started out programming in BASIC. Today, I use Python,
   the BASIC of the 21st century. Python has no GOTO, but when
   it is executed, its for loop eventually is implemented using
   a GOTO-like jump instruction. Thanks to my learning of BASIC,
   /I/ can have this insight. Younger people, who never learned
   GOTO, may still be able to use Python, but they will not
   understand what is going on behind the curtains. Therefore, for
   a profound understanding of Python, everyone should learn BASIC
   first, just like I did!


Tsk.  You should have learned (a fake simplified) assembler first, then 
you'd have an appreciation of what your processor actually did.


:-)

--
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd
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Re: Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 12:24 AM, D'Arcy Cain  wrote:
> On 09/19/2017 03:07 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>>
>>> How relevant is the "people use calculators to do arithmetic" argument
>>> today?  Okay, so I'm old and cynical, but I know [young] people who
>>> don't (can't?) calculate a gratuity without an app or a web page.
>>
>>
>> Which is a form of calculator. People still learn to use calculators at
>> school, they still use them at work. They use Excel, which is prone to
>
>
> Wow.  I still remember decrying the use of calculators in school.  It seemed
> like the loss of actual math understanding.  When I was young (and not
> running from dinosaurs) we learned the addition and multiplication tables by
> heart (and received a few sore knuckles while we struggled) and then learned
> to do math by paper and pencil.  When it was time for a mechanical aid we
> got a slide rule.  I truly believe that doing so gave me the best
> understanding of math that I could get.  Now, of course, I use calculators
> and computers but I still understand the theory behind what I am doing.

I learned math the same way - and also a lot of algebra. I was
permitted to use a programmable calculator (on a PC) in high school
but only if I programmed it myself using primitives, which meant that
I had to prove that I'd mastered the math. Ended up with a whole bunch
of handy features that a typical calculator wouldn't have.

> To this day while writing code I will actually put pen to paper in order to
> check that my program is doing the correct calculations.

Pen and paper are not my things, but if I have to manually check
something, I'll do it. Usually with a REPL or something.

ChrisA
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