EdwardCoffin
Joined 19 years ago
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Comment · 3 months ago
Comment · 3 months ago
Objekt, Numerik, Logik, Klock, according to Wikipedia [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rekursiv#Physical_packaging
Comment · 4 months ago
On the other hand, the bars have to be cut no matter which strategy one uses, so this criticism of not being able to cut the bars into exactly equal pieces applies equally to the other strategies.
This Egyptian strategy definitely does have a property of being easier to reason about, and one doesn't have to contend with complaints of say losing out on small amounts of metal around the cuts when one is given three smaller bars that put end-to-end are as long as another, but whose internal mating surfaces don't match up exactly.
Comment · 6 months ago
I think it was C+@ (pronounced CAT, as I recall).
Edit: pasting a comment of mine from here in 2019 [1]:
The language is C+@ [2]. I dug up an article about it in Dr. Dobbs Journal, the October 1993 issue. This does not seem to be the article I am remembering, since it does not go into the instruction interleaving technique anywhere near as much as I remember, but they do mention it and say it was called "beading":
The binaries produced by the C+@ compiler are independent of the underlying machine architecture. Without recompiling, applications can be moved from SPARC to 68000 to Intel x86, and so on. C+@ is not interpretive--the binaries are encoded using a sophisticated 'beading' technique developed at Bell Labs. Because of the streamlined language design, the C+@ compiler produces these portable binaries with extraordinary speed, without the need for preprocessing or front ends.
This is from the article's introduction:
The C+@ programming language, an object-oriented language derived from AT&T Bell Lab's Calico programming language, was developed to provide programmers with a true object-based language and development environment. C+@ (pronounced "cat") has the syntax of C and the power of Smalltalk. Unlike C++, C+@ includes a mature class library with more than 350 classes used throughout the system. The C+@ compiler itself is written in C+@, and all of the source for the class libraries is included with development systems. The Calico project was started at AT&T Bell Labs in the early '80s, after the introduction of Smalltalk and at the same time as C++. Calico was originally used for rapid prototyping of telecommunication services; hence, its heavy emphasis on keeping the language syntax simple and showcasing the power of the graphical development environment.*
Comment · 7 months ago
I use one much like this four or five times a day, and have none of the problems described. I fill it through the spout though, so never have to remove the lid.
Comment · 9 months ago
This makes me think of Bane's rule, described in this comment here [1]:
Bane's rule, you don't understand a distributed computing problem until you can get it to fit on a single machine first.
Comment · 10 months ago
Though I was confident this was just a metaphor, I did try cracking a walnut using this method. I submerged three walnuts in a jar with some tap water, and let them sit for three years before trying to open them.
It was a let-down: they were easier to open, but certainly not by hand, I still had to use a nutcracker. They smelled bad, too. I did not try eating them.
Comment · 10 months ago
In the same vein is the talk Pathological Physics: Tales from 'The Box' [1] which talks about various physics papers written by amateurs and sent in to the physics department at the university the speaker was in.
Comment · 11 months ago
Even if that's the intended meaning of literally, it is still a reckless exaggeration. I'm pretty sure that Stephenson's endings are no more abrupt than some of Shakespeare's (check out Hamlet and Macbeth) or some of Frank Herbert's (see Dune and Children of Dune), and I never hear anyone go out of their way to describe either of them as being unable to write endings.
Comment · 11 months ago
>> ‘It was the development environment’
> No, it wasn’t.
I kind of think it was. The best argument I think is embodied in Kent Pitman's comments in this usenet thread [1] where he argues that for the Lisp Machine romantics (at least the subset that include him) what they are really referring to is the total integration of the software, and he gives some pretty good examples of the benefits they bring. He freely admits there's not any reason why the experience could not be reproduced on other systems, it's that it hasn't been that is the problem.
I found his two specific examples particularly interesting. Search for
* Tags Multiple Query Replace From Buffer
* Source Compare
[1] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp/c/XpvUwF2xKbk/m/X...
Comment · 11 months ago
In the same vein was an incident where an improperly localized phone in Turkey caused a sent message to arrive with different characters, with very different meaning, and the fallout was two deaths [1], discussed here [2]
Comment · 11 months ago
In a similar vein is this 2003 post in an MIT discussion forum by Scott McKay [1].
I'd also highly recommend that anyone interested in this kind of thing listen to all three of the Dynamic Languages Wizards Series panels from 2001: runtime [2], language design [3], and compilation [4]
Note that though these are videos, there isn't that much compelling in the visual portion, you could easily rip them to audio files and lose little.
[1] https://libarynth.org/fifty_questions_for_a_prospective_lang...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LG-RtcSYUQ
Comment · 1 year ago
I know that Guy Steele joined Thinking Machines, but after they'd at least designed the CM-1. He talked a little about it in A Conversation with Guy Steele Jr. in the April 2005 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal. I don't have a link, but I am sure he has talked about it elsewhere too.
Comment · 1 year ago
You're probably referring to A FEW NOTES ON THE CULTURE by Iain M Banks [1]
Comment · 1 year ago
This is not the first time I've read articles attempting to paint the Culture as a dystopia. I think the best counter is to quote the author's own words, describing how he felt about it, from an interview he did with CNN [1]:
CNN: Would you like to live in the Culture [the society he has created]?
Iain M. Banks: Good grief yes, heck, yeah, oh it's my secular heaven ... Yes, I would, absolutely. Again it comes down to wish fulfillment. I haven't done a study and taken lots of replies across a cross-section of humanity to find out what would be their personal utopia. It's mine, I thought of it, and I'm going home with it -- absolutely, it's great.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/15/iain.banks/ind...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Lettvin
[2] https://www.mindstrengthbalance.com/learn/interviews/jeromel... (search for Laszlo to find the bit where they start talking about this)