zabzonk

7 ms·

91.
by zabzonk 4mo ago
I was once unemployed for a year when I was young (about 19) and I rather frighteningly read about one (probably 0.75) fairly serious novel a day (think Graham Greene sort of stuff). I have loads of time on my hands now (I'm 72) and th
92.
by zabzonk 4mo ago
I think hypertext is best for things like Pale Fire, where the linked text is long (it is a novel, after all), but I must admit that I like paper footnotes are good for things like the SF novels of Jack Vance, so you stay on (more or less)
93.
by zabzonk 4mo ago
> the usage of Nabokov's book as a demo for hypertext I get what you are saying, but should just point out that the Kindle version of the Penguin edition provides hypertext links from the poem to the deranged narrator's comment
94.
by zabzonk 4mo ago
We need an ending to byte-sizeism as well.
95.
by zabzonk 4mo ago
I will go for: hedgehog fox puffin bumblebee
96.
Shortlist of Animals for UK Banknotes(theguardian.com)
5 points by zabzonk 4mo ago|1 comments
97.
by zabzonk 4mo ago
Thought this might be about JANET, the rationale for which I have never really understood. The wikipedia article on it is not very explanatory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET
98.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
> The second attempt is always better. Um, see The Second System Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
99.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
I was very happy working extra (I won't call them long) hours when I first learned about computing. A bit later on when I started working for financial entities I felt a bit different - the work was interesting, but I just wasn't
100.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
WTF? I found this a parody. Perhaps because I've just been re-reading C.S. Lewis's "That Hideous Strength", where language becomes meaningless, I can't stand the design of the site or the text it presents. Making a
101.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
> the mall was also a good time. Oh well, not for me. I am/was a UK project manager who spent far too much time in the malls around Princeton NJ, where we were working. I had no choice because I don't drive, so I depended on b
102.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
Far better to be out on your bike, exploring a wood, climbing trees, and possibly disturbing a very grumpy badger. The mall - breathing plastic fumes, looking at overpriced plastic toys, summoning your parents for your every whim. I know w
103.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
> This was bad advice back then and is even worse advice today. The languages have diverged a lot, it's true. Still, it is worth noting that all the code in TCPL 2nd Ed was compiled with Stroustrups C++ compiler, as there wasn&#x27
104.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
Actually, if you were mad enough to use the feature, the Dec10 had 6-bit "bytes" - 6 to a word.
105.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
> a full-fledged parser perhaps more accurately a fully fledged compiler (that emitted C)
106.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
> Commodore was already engaged in a cutthroat price war with Texas Instruments that almost sank the company. Really? Selling what? The TI99 was never a serious competitor for anything.
107.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
Is there some relationship between Usborne and Osborne books? And of course the Osborne portable computer?
108.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
I too wrote my own platform, in the early 80s, in C++. I didn't use C++ for the user-written code, instead I used a Forth like, implemented in C++. This probably doomed the program, along with my inability to get string literals and
109.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
Before I came across Zork, I thought I was quite intelligent...
110.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
You can't beat (literally) Esme Weatherwax and Gytha Ogg. Magrat is great too, particularly in "Lords & Ladies".
111.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
I didn't read the Tiffany Aching books for quite a while because I thought they were aimed at adolescents. Perhaps they are, but they are also full of Pratchett humour and characters. Don't miss out on them!
112.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
They were not so poorly paid - I was a senior analyst/programmer (and did some teaching), quite reasonably compensated, and the lecturers would get quite a bit more than me. But if you want to substitute "established business mode
113.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
Sorry, bad link to book. Use https://www.amazon.co.uk/Penguin-Book-Kites-Original/dp/0140... It really is a great book if you have any interest in flying things.
114.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
One lecturer at a Polytechnic I worked for made his students buy his book. Well, a photocopy actually, done without payment from him by the Poly's Copy Services. Other lecturers got "gifts" from publishers for requiring or at
115.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
Back when I was a kid in the smallish UK city of Lincoln, we had two big model shops (tools, balsa kits, aero engines, Airfix, etc.), one big toyshop (Scalextric, and toys for young kids) and one rather weird place that specialised in fish
116.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
> in my experience that's usually a pretty small part of any given codebase Our experiences differ then. Mine is that almost all of the code I write is directly targeted on the usually quite complex problem I am trying to solve. I
117.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
Except that LMMs don't work on individual words.
118.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
Well, they deleted it from somewhere. As I assumed they were using a VCS I assumed they deleted it from that. Or are they really short of disk space?
119.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
> 100k lines is tiny No, no, it is not, or at least not in my experience (I do not and never have done web development - medium performance C++ code - I don't see how I could write, understand and support 100K lines of code in this
120.
by zabzonk 5mo ago
> All of those things are totally ordinary. reply I would need some evidence of that.

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