mschaef

49 ms·

421.
by mschaef 8y ago
> I anecdotally see people moving towards Matlab and Python for automation these days, For a while, NI provided tools in that space too. There was a product called LabWindows, which was centered around C, and a product called Hi-Q that I
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by mschaef 8y ago
Many years ago, I spent a fair amount of time coding in LabView. This is a graphical programming environment initially written to allow (presumably electrical) engineers to write code to drive various data acquisition and control tasks. (I&
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by mschaef 8y ago
This is an excellent question. I think this maybe a fault of mine, but I tend to let myself be dragged into new technologies rather than actively pursue them. (What I'll offer in my defense is that I also tend to pursue roles where I&#
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by mschaef 8y ago
I always wanted a setup like this to put debugging information on another screen. When I got to where I had the money to buy it, there were the beginnings of the much better approaches we have today. It's probably worth mentioning that
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by mschaef 8y ago
Yup... that capability was introduced with the Macintosh II and Color QuickDraw. The II essentially switched the platform to a PC-style model where there was a case with drive bays and six expansion slots and you had a separate video adapte
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by mschaef 8y ago
> SequelPro is amazing and I used it for many many years. Seconded. I inherited an old MySQL/Java system and SequelPro was invaluable to understanding how it worked and keeping it running. At least until I added a view to the schem
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by mschaef 8y ago
> Intel has already skimmed off the cream from that chip run. ... It seems kind of scummy, This is just Intel identifying a market and a way to serve it, in order to make some money. They're a business. It's what they do.
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by mschaef 8y ago
> Older houses have interesting wiring. I've even seen a 5A circuit (once) in a really old place, varnished cotton clad copper wire and other interesting stuff. I've lived in a few older homes, and have experienced some of this
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by mschaef 8y ago
> People keep bringing this up. I think the idea that a new technology takes work to provide demonstrable value shouldn't be so surprising. That had to happen with RAMAC and may or may not happen here (or with Blockchain, etc.)
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by mschaef 8y ago
> replacing the glass panes with transparent LCDs or LED displays I guess the CM-1/2/200 machines are the quintessential example of this. The Cray-2's cooling system isn't an active display, but it gets style points t
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by mschaef 8y ago
The point of the story is that people were saying that in 1953 too... Maybe this new machine is nothing, but we'll see.
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by mschaef 8y ago
From here, iirc: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ibms-early-computers Don’t have it with me, or I would check for the specific quote. This has come up previously on HN, and I wrote a few more details back then: https:&
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by mschaef 8y ago
Or "Do Not Erase!"
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by mschaef 8y ago
> Are there problems that the quantum computers of today are actually better at solving than traditional computers? When the first hard disk (IBM RAMAC) was developed, people drew the same sorts of conclusions. The difference there was t
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by mschaef 8y ago
I was about to say 'draw a shape with a toolbar button'... but after looking at historical Photoshop toolboxes, it doesn't appear to have had that feature either. :-) (Pixelmator, however, does...) I almost hate to write what
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by mschaef 8y ago
For whatever it's worth, their answer was pretty close to my immediate reaction when I saw the question. Maybe another way of phrasing the answer is that no, I don't think 'Web Dev' is a viable career option. This become
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by mschaef 8y ago
And that's been there for quite a while... Sad reality is, people expect more. There's something satisfying about being able to click a 'draw shape' icon on a tool bar and then click and drag to draw the shape on a canva
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by mschaef 8y ago
I still don't follow the prioritization, but thank you for your work on Gimp. I've used it on-again/off-again since version 0.54 (95-96), and it played a formative role in my own software career.
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by mschaef 8y ago
This is my understanding, as well. I don't know why it happened that way, but contributor mindshare really moved away from Gimp years and years ago. Other similar projects have been released and surpassed Gimp in feature compatibility
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by mschaef 8y ago
Once they're done with adjustment layers, they'll get to this lower priority task: > Shape tool - Easily create circles, rectangles, N-side polygons, stars etc. (That's in the future list, and not planned for any of the ne
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by mschaef 8y ago
Thanks for the response. > You obviously still haven't read the column and the article that explained what the goal actually was. ... > do search for all the other columns and computer science books written by both Bentley and K
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by mschaef 8y ago
> presenting just a sequence of calls ... that must implement provably worse algorithms. You've never really established why this matters given that the goal of the challenge was to present the value of literate programming. The goa
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by mschaef 8y ago
Well put. I think it's possible and desirable to simultaneously respect both approaches for their respective merits. Maybe ironically for this profession, the choice isn't either/or.
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by mschaef 8y ago
The reason I asked about a literate programming version of the shell script is that it speaks directly to Knuth's original stated goal: "I’ll try to prove the merits of literate programming by finding the best possible solution to
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by mschaef 8y ago
> McIlroy already behaved as the goal had been different than it was. How would you feel about McIlroy's solution if it was semantically exactly the same, but written in a literate approach? (Essentially a version of 'weave&#x2
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by mschaef 8y ago
I'd be honestly be concerned about retaliation. The people that got hit with the glitter bomb can probably trace back where they found it, and have already demonstrated a lack of strict attention to the law. > it's their own
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by mschaef 8y ago
> perhaps not relevant in the context of what Knuth had been asked to do, namely present an example of literate programming. Agreed... if that was the goal, then McIlroy's example was terrible (in that it didn't use literate p
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by mschaef 8y ago
> But it's also not obvious, i.e. not something a "normal user" would "know": > - even if you knew that "tr command translates... "sed ${1}q" how many people even today would know that one? Are
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by mschaef 8y ago
> And oh, the hackles it raises. :) The main reason I like the story is that it's good fodder for discussion about priorities in software development. After all, counting words isn't exactly an interesting problem in 2018, but
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by mschaef 8y ago
> It's quite possible that a sorted word count was easiest to do with bash and unix utilities in 1992. Now, it's easier and more comprehensible in your favorite scripting language It'd be interesting to see how true this

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