mschaef

78 ms·

691.
by mschaef 9y ago
> if you had a 386SX you might as well have had a 286 Agreed. My family bought a 386sx/16 at my convincing, but based on the way we wound up using the machine, one of the contemporary 286/20's would have been a better choi
692.
by mschaef 9y ago
For me at least, graphical programming tended to crank code style issues up to 11. If you think linear text code formatting is bad, laying out a flow graph on the screen is worse. If you think naming a function is bad, try drawing an icon
693.
by mschaef 9y ago
> This is visually represented of the program's flow graph LabView is more of a data flow graph than a control flow graph, aside from the boxes that represent deviations from the usual rules (For loops, conditionals, sequences, etc
694.
by mschaef 9y ago
Agreed... I had a response written, realized life is too short, and just closed the window before posting.
695.
by mschaef 9y ago
Early in my career, I did some work on what was essentially a Foundation Fieldbus to 4-20ma adapter. To get it to control our pneumatic valve for a demo, we wired it to a 4-20mA to 3-15PSI converter and then to the valve itself. It was a bi
696.
by mschaef 9y ago
Thanks... I just ordered a used copy. I remember enjoying one of Ceruzzi's other books: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/history-modern-computing
697.
by mschaef 9y ago
Around the time of ENIAC, there was a quote to the effect that you could do a lot with ten million multiplies. I loved the fact that they were thinking in terms of absolute number of operations (as opposed to rate), and that the scale is ju
698.
by mschaef 9y ago
Agree this this is a good idea, although not necessarily on real hardware. There's enough both CapEx and OpEx that would be necessary for the hardware that it would mainly tend to restrict access to the course. That said, on emulation,
699.
by mschaef 9y ago
Pneumatic signaling has been commonplace too... set points for valves, etc. can be sent by varying the (low) pressure in an air line to the valve itself. One downside to this is the case where there's condensation in the line and tempe
700.
by mschaef 9y ago
Thanks... I've made that typo something like four times today and it's not yet 9AM.
701.
by mschaef 9y ago
This book contains descriptions of many of these, including a particularly nice discussion of the Zuse Z3: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/first-computers Also here: http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre&#x2
702.
by mschaef 9y ago
Yeah... Lisp has a long history as a test bed of sorts for language ideas. (For the same reason it's particularly well suited for DSLs.)
703.
by mschaef 10y ago
Back in 1997-8, I ran across custom hardware that used this strategy to directly transfer large volumes of ADC data from the sampling hardware to a disk array. It made absolute sense given the the data volumes involved. (100-200MB/sec
704.
by mschaef 10y ago
This is so ridiculous that I can't tell if it's a joke or these people are even more delusional than the Pear Audio/Denon AKDL-1 crowd. https://www.cnet.com/news/denons-500-ethernet-cable/
705.
by mschaef 10y ago
Agreed... the notational convenience of GC is easy to overlook but important. Particularly when anonymous closures, etc get involved, it's very useful to not have to save off a reference and pass it around to the point where it can be
706.
Numerical Performance Improvements from Software vs. From Hardware(imgur.com)
2 points by mschaef 10y ago|0 comments
707.
by mschaef 10y ago
> At least now the code that "seems to work" usually does, Some of that may come down to better hardware. It's possible to be incredibly naive with today's hardware and still get results that would've taken high
708.
by mschaef 10y ago
> Every service request would new some worker object which would in turn spin up an FixedThreadPoolExecutorService I've recently reviewed (and failed) code that did exactly this. Maybe it's a more common misunderstanding than I
709.
by mschaef 10y ago
Easy to overthink this: create a memory leak by retaining un-needed references. I forget where I read it, but I once saw GC characterized as changing memory management from managing the nodes of graph to managing the edges. It's more a
710.
by mschaef 10y ago
OS/2 may have been fine in the abstract, but set in the context of the time, it left a lot to be desired. Not only did it require a bunch of extra (expensive) memory, it also required new the purchase of new software to take advantage
711.
by mschaef 10y ago
This is a good article, but keep in mind the timeframe it writes about. Not only was it 22 years ago, its writing about systems at the bare minimum system requirements. (Personally speaking, I remember speccing out a previous gen Windows 3.
712.
by mschaef 10y ago
Keep in mind though, that the performance optimization the Windows article talks about is how to reduce the working set in memory more than the CPU consumption.
713.
by mschaef 10y ago
The Windows 1.0 clock (1988) had a 1Hz second sweep hand that ran on a 4.77MHz 8088. It's really just a couple clipped line segments each second. http://variableghz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/win
714.
by mschaef 10y ago
Cool... good luck! (If you ever find an intuitive way to think about reactive power, please let me know... I get it in broad strokes, I've been trying to wrap my head around the details for over 20 years, off and on.) > I have been
715.
by mschaef 10y ago
The Windows 95 optimization related to the blinking clock making it difficult to page code out... which was very important on systems at the minimum 4MB RAM required by Windows 95. I suspect that iPhone's "Clock" app would ha
716.
by mschaef 10y ago
This reminds me that as part of the Windows95 development effort, Microsoft disabled per-second updates of the taskbar clock to improve performance. Raymond Chen wrote a bit on it back in 2003: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com&#
717.
by mschaef 10y ago
Synchronous clocks do this too... they've driven by a motor that's designed to work in phase with the electrical grid's frequency. This means they rotate at a fixed speed and can be used as a time base for a clock. From the p
718.
by mschaef 10y ago
Well, Emacs did stand for "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping", after all...
719.
by mschaef 10y ago
I think (hope?) it's less about the specific technology than about the general attitude of looking down on someone for the choice. Life is short, and someone that uses another tool might just have a good reason for it (that can be lear
720.
by mschaef 10y ago
> it's true power cannot be fully exploited unless you know Emacs. Very true. I've used Emacs almost exclusively for 20 years, and what I've found is what you've just said: the key is to use Emacs on its own terms. O

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