zabzonk

16 ms·

361.
by zabzonk 1y ago
Nope - simple observation!
362.
by zabzonk 1y ago
> Also, a large number of warheads would have been targeted at the mountain. Yeah, the Loonies in "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" keep pounding away at it with space rocks launched from the Moon. It worked in the end, overall.
363.
by zabzonk 1y ago
back in the days when beards were serious beards
364.
by zabzonk 1y ago
> Also what kind of psycho uses CppStyleFunctionNames() in C? People influenced by the Win32 C API. I prefer it that way myself.
365.
by zabzonk 1y ago
and thailand
366.
by zabzonk 1y ago
> Thank you, Douglas Adams actually, hp lovecraft
367.
by zabzonk 1y ago
The characters are seen from Sal's perspective, and I will admit he is not the sharpest pencil in the box (I think Kerouac, who was quite smart, realises this). I wonder what OTR written from Dean's point of view would be like?
368.
by zabzonk 1y ago
> Ah, Barbarian game was almost impossibly difficult, imho. did look good, though.
369.
by zabzonk 1y ago
seems to be single-spaced to me, and it is my own favourite code spacing
370.
by zabzonk 1y ago
Just thinking how, shall we say "svelte" Woz looked in the first photo, compared with the "portly" (but cheerful and brilliant) look of later years.
371.
by zabzonk 1y ago
I'm a retired 72. I've been programming in C, C++, Fortran, ASM etc. etc. for over 40 years, and used just about every OS/GUI going. But, but, but I really cannot get along with mobile phones! Whenever I pick one up I swipe o
372.
by zabzonk 1y ago
The newsagent chain Menzies (plural implied) was pronounced Ming-is-es.
373.
by zabzonk 1y ago
Well, I dunno. On my lock screen I get local weather, local events and such, which I don't mind and are not really adverts. I never see anything else. Nothing in start menu or taskbar. This is Windows 11 home. I wonder if people compla
374.
by zabzonk 1y ago
I have Windows 11 on my Asus laptop - I've never seen an ad (except on some web pages my adblocker doesn't catch) - where are all these Win 11 users seeing all these ads?
375.
by zabzonk 1y ago
> box->boxen (by analogy to oxen) is also pretty common. Not to mention (from way back when) VAX -> VAXen.
376.
by zabzonk 1y ago
Yes, I'm familiar with Pascal indexes, but I don't find them very natural for the kind of programs I write. I want functions/classes to do any sort of translation. > The books on compilers from the 70s (e.g. Gries's &
377.
by zabzonk 1y ago
> the behaviour of the float_abs operation is specified by the language Which language? Where? I just googled for float_abs and got nothing.
378.
by zabzonk 1y ago
None, in my experience. 1-based is far, far likely to introduce errors, as you have to keep adjusting the index to the algorithm and/or what is actually going on underneath.
379.
by zabzonk 1y ago
I would say it is sensible. Given that an array index is an unsigned integer, what are you going to do with an index of zero? Perhaps I've been influenced by writing a lot of code in assembler, way back when, but zero-based has always
380.
by zabzonk 1y ago
> surely the optimizer can reason that the float_abs operation produces a positive number! how?
381.
by zabzonk 1y ago
I'd agree with 1-based indexing problems, but not 0-based, which seems very natural. And if you have -2-based, I'd argue that perhaps you don't want an array.
382.
by zabzonk 1y ago
> You have finite internal state As Terry Pratchett might have said - what about quantum?
383.
by zabzonk 1y ago
Well, I had a very badly specified project to write a library for our back office systems to do Swift payments from our C++ applications, via COM. There was no obvious COBOL involved, on either side, but it has to be said that the whole use
384.
by zabzonk 1y ago
Ah, ed. Back in the mid 80s, I had to teach a course on Unix & its tools - if I remember correctly it was called "Unix - a modern OS". One of those tools was of course ed. We couldn't use vi because the termcap/termi
385.
by zabzonk 1y ago
I think the issue here is that people working in fintech don't seem to come across these systems much, if at all - if you know one specifically, please tell us.
386.
by zabzonk 1y ago
In retail banking I'm sure that this could be true. Working in investment banking, I never saw a single COBOL application, or had to have my C++/Java/$MODERNLANGUAGE code interact with one.
387.
by zabzonk 1y ago
Surely an abacus is a simple form of digital computer? The position/state of the beads is not continuous, ignoring the necessary changes of position/state.
388.
by zabzonk 1y ago
There is loads of stuff on utube featuring idiots blowing things (and themselves) up with highly unstable compounds.
389.
by zabzonk 1y ago
I remember when I was doing A-level chemistry at school circa 1970 we were told always to check that any glassware we were heating up a lot (or might be very exothermic) had the PYREX symbol on it, otherwise bad things could happen. A bit l
390.
by zabzonk 1y ago
It's not just London. For example the small city I now live in (Lincoln) has very few, if any, roundabouts in the city itself - they are confined to the ring-road around the place, and roads in/out of it. Not true for all places,

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