wduquette

9 ms·

121.
by wduquette 1y ago
A pet peeve of mine is theory-oriented texts that present code in a specific programming language...replacing the actual syntax with mathematical symbols. This is unhelpful for practitioners. Another peeve is when authors present algorithm
122.
by wduquette 1y ago
The "Sirius microcomputer" pictured as "The Book Machine" is in fact a Victor 9000, as you can see in the picture. The same unit was branded as "Sirius" in Europe and as "Victor 9000" in the U.S. I s
123.
by wduquette 1y ago
That moment when you want to respond to an 18-year-old comment because the commenter was Wrong On The Internet, except that trying to correct it is even more absurdly futile than usual.
124.
The Writehander(computerhistory.org)
2 points by wduquette 1y ago|1 comments
125.
by wduquette 1y ago
I was reminded of this by the recent post about "the Keyset". I read a review of one of these devices in a magazine ("Interface Age?" Byte?) back in the early days of microcomputers. It was a keyboard replacement that
126.
by wduquette 1y ago
I worked on supercomputer algorithms to render planetary terrain data (image plus digital elevation) using tiling back in the early 90’s. I’m not sure where my co-worker got the idea, but it seemed like an obvious thing to do.
127.
by wduquette 1y ago
It’s all about the terms. As soon as rules can create an infinite sequence of new terms for a single relation, e.g. by addition, you’ve got non-termination.
128.
by wduquette 1y ago
Rather, I’d say they observe a difference between the populations of the different countries, and ascribe the difference to each country’s culture…which is, yes, a lazy conclusion. It omits climate, biological differences between the popul
129.
by wduquette 1y ago
I learned BASIC with line numbers and GOTO statements when I was 14 or so. There were two fancy control structures: FOR/NEXT loops and functions that could take one argument and return a value based on a simple expression. Later we g
130.
by wduquette 1y ago
Seems to me that the OP’s discussion presumes that the obvious managerial and institutional root causes have already been dealt with. I think he’s right about latent faults and fault tolerance; but an organization that doesn’t do good unit
131.
by wduquette 1y ago
I still wouldn't want everything on the platform running in a single address space, useful as it is for monolithic applications.
132.
by wduquette 1y ago
And there it is. Thanks very much!
133.
by wduquette 1y ago
Oh, I get the importance of type theory in general. I hadn’t run into Martin-Lof before.
134.
by wduquette 1y ago
"Everything worked in a single address space, programs could talk to each other in ways operating systems of today couldn’t dream of." Those of us who used early versions of Windows without protected memory don't consider a &
135.
by wduquette 1y ago
Is Martin-Lof's type theory foundational for stuff people are using today? Or is it an interesting idea that never came to fruition?
136.
by wduquette 1y ago
The smaller the supply chain, the smaller the chance of supply-chain attacks. I program mostly in Java these days, and I have always been very careful of adding external dependencies to my code bases. A few times I have in fact replaced a
137.
by wduquette 1y ago
Re: visualizations, yeah, it’s really easy to caught up in playing with the algorithm just to watch it run rather than using it in your project. Been there, did that. For two distinct projects.
138.
by wduquette 1y ago
The thing that fatigues me with the Oblivion remaster are the constant loading screens. Go from the first floor to the second floor of a house? Loading screen! Some are faster than others, but they all break the flow. But IIRC this was a
139.
by wduquette 1y ago
Yeah, shaders aren't the problem with Oblivion; the problem with Oblivion is that when you move to a new scene everything looks like it's made of enormous triangular things until the rendering catches up, which on my machine can t
140.
by wduquette 1y ago
I'm having a lot more fun with the Oblivion remaster than I did with the original game (which I first played years after Skyrim came out). But I will say, while the graphics are better than the original Oblivion, Unreal 5 is NOT an imp
141.
by wduquette 1y ago
Well, I'm glad I read these comments rather than trumpeting my new found knowledge of Greek particles to all and sundry. You have my thanks.
142.
by wduquette 1y ago
That was my reaction when I first came across it.
143.
by wduquette 1y ago
OO is absolutely the wrong paradigm for interactive fiction. Writing a text adventure has been my favorite way to experiment with a new language for decades now, and I’ve gone down the OO rabbit hole too many times. For this use case, you
144.
by wduquette 1y ago
My buddy and I added a room to the entrance of the Little Twisty Maze of Passages All The Same. If you said “out” having just entered the maze, you went to a room that said, “You are out. There is nothing in all directions.” “In” would re
145.
by wduquette 1y ago
I had a copy of the Fortran IV source for the PDP-11 back in the late 70’s. My friend and I tried to extend the game a bit, but soon ran into trouble. Dunno whether this is the same code or not.
146.
by wduquette 1y ago
Heh. The books on the list would be the ones from which I learned new ways to think about programming. Most of them are now long out-of-date, as witness the discussion on "101 BASIC Games" going on elsewhere on Hacker News. &quot
147.
by wduquette 1y ago
Nah, this was the book on how to write programs in the dominant end-user language of the day. Few of the games are all that memorable, really; the coolness lay in making the computer do things, in building something that was interactive.
148.
by wduquette 1y ago
Crafting Interpreters is the right at the top of my list of favorite programming books…and I’ve been reading them since the late 70’s. Amazingly clear and well-designed.
149.
by wduquette 1y ago
This exact book is how I learned to program, back in the late ‘70’s. Lots of good memories.
150.
by wduquette 2y ago
I watched my dad build the PDP-11, terminal, and paper tape reader/punch. Eventually we got a dual-8” floppy drive; he might have built that, too, I don’t remember.

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