From dave at horsfall.org Tue Dec 3 17:55:43 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2019 18:55:43 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
As every computer programmer should know, John Backus was emitted in 1924; he
gave us the BNF syntax, but the sod also gave us that FORTRAN obscenity...
Trivia: there is no way that FORTRAN can be described in any syntax; it is
completely ad-hoc.
-- Dave
From clemc at ccc.com Tue Dec 3 23:44:38 2019
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2019 08:44:38 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 2:56 AM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> As every computer programmer should know, John Backus was emitted in 1924;
> he
> gave us the BNF syntax, but the sod also gave us that FORTRAN obscenity...
>
Be careful, Fortran still pays a lot of bills (I like to say that it has
paid my salary for nearly 45 years and I don't program in it - I'm an OS
guy). But Fortran >>is<< the #1 language for anything scientific and I
don't think that is going away in the future or really change its position
in popularity for a number of reasons (my analog is the QWERTY keyboard -
that ship has sailed and it's not economically interesting). There are a
number of places to check this out, but try looking at Archer AC Code Status
<http://www.archer.ac.uk/status/codes/>, which is an interesting HPC usage
site in the UK. Note that Fortran is by far the leading programming
language used for ‘production’ (there are other sites that offer similar
data, I'll leave it to the reader to find them).
Trivia: there is no way that FORTRAN can be described in any syntax; it is
> completely ad-hoc.
Again, be careful with such observations. First off, I'm fairly sure that
the Intel Compiler teams (ifort
<https://software.intel.com/en-us/fortran-compilers>) use a parser
generator for parts of the ifort front-end. (Paul W might know more details
as he once worked in that technology). As I understand it, the front-end
does have a number of special cases in it, so your observation is partially
true, but the language definition is not 'completely ad-hoc'.
The facts are that the language my father learned in the early 1960s
(FORTRAN-II) and the language I learned in the late 60's/early 1970s
(FORTRAN-IV) are not the same language as today's Fortran-2018, i.e. the
language definition has hardly been static. Said in another way, about a
year ago, a new standard for Fortran 2018 standard was released – see Fortran
2018 (Formerly Fortran 2015) <https://wg5-fortran.org/f2018.html> and
it actually
offers support for ‘modern’ ideas such as object-oriented programming:
Object-oriented
programming in Fortran Wiki
<http://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Object-oriented+programming>
.
FWIW: I tried to explain some of these ideas pictorially in my Quora
answer: Clem Cole's answer to Is Fortran obsolete?
<https://www.quora.com/Is-Fortran-obsolete/answer/Clem-Cole> This is not to
denigrate other languages like Julia, Tensorflow etc. But the fact is that
the hammer has been improved and the *ways the nails are delivered has
changed*, but the *fundamental action provided* (fastening for nails and
scientific computation in the case of Fortran) has been unchanged because
it has proven to be the one of the best, if not the best to do the job it
is designed to do.
That said, I offer the following code snippet, which my Intel 2018
compatible compiler accepts without any switches. Which is really a
remarkable comment about the women and men in the front-end team:
C This FORTRAN program may be compiled and run on a Norsk Data
C computer running SINTRAN and the FTN compiler. It uses only
C FORTRAN reserved words, and contains just one numerical
C constant, in a character string (a format specifier). When
C you run it, it prints a well known mathematical construct...
C
C Even FORTRAN is a block structured programming language:
C
PROGRAM
;PROGRAM;INTEGERIF,INTEGER,GOTO,IMPLICIT;REALREAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNA
AL,FORMAT,END;INTEGERLOGICAL;REALCOMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER
R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
*INTEGER*INTEGER-INTEGER-IF;CALLFUNCTION(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EX
XTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);CALL
LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER)
END
SUBROUTINEFUNCTIO
ON(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA
A,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);RETURN
END
SUBROUTINESUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,L
LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);INTEGERGOTO,IMPLICIT(GOTO),LOGICAL(GOTO),I
IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
ER,EXTERNAL-IF;IMPLICIT(RETURN)=LOGICAL(RETURN)+LOGICAL(RETURN-IF);
;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$ '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
=IF,GOTO;LOGICAL(RETURN)=IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;ENDDO
END
Running the program should yield:
1
1 1
1 2 1
1 3 3 1
1 4 6 4 1
1 5 10 10 5 1
1 6 15 20 15 6 1
1 7 21 35 35 21 7 1
1 8 28 56 70 56 28 8 1
1 9 36 84 126 126 84 36 9 1
1 10 45 120 210 252 210 120 45 10 1
1 11 55 165 330 462 462 330 165 55 11 1
1 12 66 220 495 792 924 792 495 220 66 12 1
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From toby at telegraphics.com.au Wed Dec 4 01:57:20 2019
From: toby at telegraphics.com.au (Toby Thain)
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2019 10:57:20 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <43f47b19-530a-0f72-77b0-f3d6dfcb21b5@telegraphics.com.au>
On 2019-12-03 8:44 a.m., Clem Cole wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 2:56 AM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org
> <mailto:dave at horsfall.org>> wrote:
>
> As every computer programmer should know, John Backus was emitted in
> 1924; he
> gave us the BNF syntax, but the sod also gave us that FORTRAN
> obscenity...
>
> Be careful, Fortran still pays a lot of bills
We do this back and forth EVERY YEAR, guys.
--Toby
From lars at nocrew.org Wed Dec 4 02:05:59 2019
From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2019 16:05:59 +0000
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <43f47b19-530a-0f72-77b0-f3d6dfcb21b5@telegraphics.com.au> (Toby
Thain's message of "Tue, 3 Dec 2019 10:57:20 -0500")
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
<43f47b19-530a-0f72-77b0-f3d6dfcb21b5@telegraphics.com.au>
Message-ID: <7wmuc9s8bc.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
Toby Thain wrote:
> We do this back and forth EVERY YEAR, guys.
Better uphold that time-honored tradition!
From cym224 at gmail.com Wed Dec 4 05:20:29 2019
From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam)
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2019 14:20:29 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <54dffceb-0a7f-929a-11ec-b775a98f44d4@gmail.com>
On 12/03/19 02:55, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> As every computer programmer should know, John Backus was emitted in
> 1924; he gave us the BNF syntax, but the sod also gave us that FORTRAN
> obscenity...
A few decades ago, I applied for a job in a place that used VAX FORTRAN
and I knew only a bit FORTRAN II. Knowing several imperative languages,
I told them that I knew it, bought the book "FORTRAN Tools for VAX/VMS
and MS-DOS", and read it in a week, blown away about how far VAX FORTRAN
was from FORTRAN II. It was actually quite reasonable.
N.
From wobblygong at gmail.com Wed Dec 4 15:41:36 2019
From: wobblygong at gmail.com (Wesley Parish)
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2019 18:41:36 +1300
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CACNPpeZwuv97EOPwd-WWyiVLKb5VSyUwxJ41J+A1Zrq4=gP1Sw@mail.gmail.com>
I've just run that little program through gfortran without switches
(naming it pyramid.for) and it comes up with:
pyramid.for:25:6:
;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
1
Error: Bad continuation line at (1)
pyramid.for:12:9:
R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
1
Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
pyramid.for:23:56:
IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
1
Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
pyramid.for:25:52:
;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
1
Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
pyramid.for:26:43:
XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$ '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
1
Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
pyramid.for:27:62:
IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
1
Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
pyramid.for:23:34:
IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
1
Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
pyramid.for:15:17:
LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER)
1
Warning: Rank mismatch in argument ‘implicit’ at (1) (rank-1 and
scalar) [-Wargument-mismatch]
I think gfortran must have '--strict' on by default. I might try it
with the OpenWatcom Fortran compiler next - if it'll install on my
current Linux box.
Just out of interest, what is your current Fortran 2018 compiler?
Wesley Parish
On 12/4/19, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 2:56 AM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>
>> As every computer programmer should know, John Backus was emitted in
>> 1924;
>> he
>> gave us the BNF syntax, but the sod also gave us that FORTRAN
>> obscenity...
>>
> Be careful, Fortran still pays a lot of bills (I like to say that it has
> paid my salary for nearly 45 years and I don't program in it - I'm an OS
> guy). But Fortran >>is<< the #1 language for anything scientific and I
> don't think that is going away in the future or really change its position
> in popularity for a number of reasons (my analog is the QWERTY keyboard -
> that ship has sailed and it's not economically interesting). There are a
> number of places to check this out, but try looking at Archer AC Code
> Status
> <http://www.archer.ac.uk/status/codes/>, which is an interesting HPC usage
> site in the UK. Note that Fortran is by far the leading programming
> language used for ‘production’ (there are other sites that offer similar
> data, I'll leave it to the reader to find them).
>
> Trivia: there is no way that FORTRAN can be described in any syntax; it is
>> completely ad-hoc.
>
> Again, be careful with such observations. First off, I'm fairly sure that
> the Intel Compiler teams (ifort
> <https://software.intel.com/en-us/fortran-compilers>) use a parser
> generator for parts of the ifort front-end. (Paul W might know more details
> as he once worked in that technology). As I understand it, the front-end
> does have a number of special cases in it, so your observation is partially
> true, but the language definition is not 'completely ad-hoc'.
>
> The facts are that the language my father learned in the early 1960s
> (FORTRAN-II) and the language I learned in the late 60's/early 1970s
> (FORTRAN-IV) are not the same language as today's Fortran-2018, i.e. the
> language definition has hardly been static. Said in another way, about a
> year ago, a new standard for Fortran 2018 standard was released – see
> Fortran
> 2018 (Formerly Fortran 2015) <https://wg5-fortran.org/f2018.html> and
> it actually
> offers support for ‘modern’ ideas such as object-oriented programming:
> Object-oriented
> programming in Fortran Wiki
> <http://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Object-oriented+programming>
> .
>
> FWIW: I tried to explain some of these ideas pictorially in my Quora
> answer: Clem Cole's answer to Is Fortran obsolete?
> <https://www.quora.com/Is-Fortran-obsolete/answer/Clem-Cole> This is not to
> denigrate other languages like Julia, Tensorflow etc. But the fact is that
> the hammer has been improved and the *ways the nails are delivered has
> changed*, but the *fundamental action provided* (fastening for nails and
> scientific computation in the case of Fortran) has been unchanged because
> it has proven to be the one of the best, if not the best to do the job it
> is designed to do.
>
> That said, I offer the following code snippet, which my Intel 2018
> compatible compiler accepts without any switches. Which is really a
> remarkable comment about the women and men in the front-end team:
>
> C This FORTRAN program may be compiled and run on a Norsk Data
> C computer running SINTRAN and the FTN compiler. It uses only
> C FORTRAN reserved words, and contains just one numerical
> C constant, in a character string (a format specifier). When
> C you run it, it prints a well known mathematical construct...
> C
> C Even FORTRAN is a block structured programming language:
> C
> PROGRAM
> ;PROGRAM;INTEGERIF,INTEGER,GOTO,IMPLICIT;REALREAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNA
> AL,FORMAT,END;INTEGERLOGICAL;REALCOMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER
> R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
> *INTEGER*INTEGER-INTEGER-IF;CALLFUNCTION(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EX
> XTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);CALL
> LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER)
> END
> SUBROUTINEFUNCTIO
> ON(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA
> A,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);RETURN
> END
> SUBROUTINESUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,L
> LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);INTEGERGOTO,IMPLICIT(GOTO),LOGICAL(GOTO),I
> IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
> ER,EXTERNAL-IF;IMPLICIT(RETURN)=LOGICAL(RETURN)+LOGICAL(RETURN-IF);
> ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
> XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$ '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
> IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
> =IF,GOTO;LOGICAL(RETURN)=IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;ENDDO
> END
> Running the program should yield:
> 1
> 1 1
> 1 2 1
> 1 3 3 1
> 1 4 6 4 1
> 1 5 10 10 5 1
> 1 6 15 20 15 6 1
> 1 7 21 35 35 21 7 1
> 1 8 28 56 70 56 28 8 1
> 1 9 36 84 126 126 84 36 9 1
> 1 10 45 120 210 252 210 120 45 10 1
> 1 11 55 165 330 462 462 330 165 55 11 1
> 1 12 66 220 495 792 924 792 495 220 66 12 1
>
From clemc at ccc.com Thu Dec 5 00:54:08 2019
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2019 09:54:08 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <CACNPpeZwuv97EOPwd-WWyiVLKb5VSyUwxJ41J+A1Zrq4=gP1Sw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
<CACNPpeZwuv97EOPwd-WWyiVLKb5VSyUwxJ41J+A1Zrq4=gP1Sw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2P-X+3neMBdK=PZ1jdZLs78Vu7dbsfvd2P+h1PTn2BX4g@mail.gmail.com>
Intel ifort <https://software.intel.com/en-us/fortran-compilers> which as
one of my friends like to say "has the DEC Fortran compiler DNA ground up
and reinserted" ;-)
On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 12:41 AM Wesley Parish <wobblygong at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've just run that little program through gfortran without switches
> (naming it pyramid.for) and it comes up with:
>
> pyramid.for:25:6:
>
> ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
> 1
> Error: Bad continuation line at (1)
> pyramid.for:12:9:
>
> R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
> 1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:23:56:
>
> IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
> 1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:25:52:
>
> ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
> 1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:26:43:
>
> XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$ '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
> 1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:27:62:
>
> IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
> 1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:23:34:
>
> IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
> 1
> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
> pyramid.for:15:17:
>
> LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER)
> 1
> Warning: Rank mismatch in argument ‘implicit’ at (1) (rank-1 and
> scalar) [-Wargument-mismatch]
>
> I think gfortran must have '--strict' on by default. I might try it
> with the OpenWatcom Fortran compiler next - if it'll install on my
> current Linux box.
>
> Just out of interest, what is your current Fortran 2018 compiler?
>
> Wesley Parish
>
> On 12/4/19, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 2:56 AM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> >
> >> As every computer programmer should know, John Backus was emitted in
> >> 1924;
> >> he
> >> gave us the BNF syntax, but the sod also gave us that FORTRAN
> >> obscenity...
> >>
> > Be careful, Fortran still pays a lot of bills (I like to say that it has
> > paid my salary for nearly 45 years and I don't program in it - I'm an OS
> > guy). But Fortran >>is<< the #1 language for anything scientific and I
> > don't think that is going away in the future or really change its
> position
> > in popularity for a number of reasons (my analog is the QWERTY keyboard -
> > that ship has sailed and it's not economically interesting). There are a
> > number of places to check this out, but try looking at Archer AC Code
> > Status
> > <http://www.archer.ac.uk/status/codes/>, which is an interesting HPC
> usage
> > site in the UK. Note that Fortran is by far the leading programming
> > language used for ‘production’ (there are other sites that offer similar
> > data, I'll leave it to the reader to find them).
> >
> > Trivia: there is no way that FORTRAN can be described in any syntax; it
> is
> >> completely ad-hoc.
> >
> > Again, be careful with such observations. First off, I'm fairly sure
> that
> > the Intel Compiler teams (ifort
> > <https://software.intel.com/en-us/fortran-compilers>) use a parser
> > generator for parts of the ifort front-end. (Paul W might know more
> details
> > as he once worked in that technology). As I understand it, the front-end
> > does have a number of special cases in it, so your observation is
> partially
> > true, but the language definition is not 'completely ad-hoc'.
> >
> > The facts are that the language my father learned in the early 1960s
> > (FORTRAN-II) and the language I learned in the late 60's/early 1970s
> > (FORTRAN-IV) are not the same language as today's Fortran-2018, i.e. the
> > language definition has hardly been static. Said in another way, about a
> > year ago, a new standard for Fortran 2018 standard was released – see
> > Fortran
> > 2018 (Formerly Fortran 2015) <https://wg5-fortran.org/f2018.html> and
> > it actually
> > offers support for ‘modern’ ideas such as object-oriented programming:
> > Object-oriented
> > programming in Fortran Wiki
> > <http://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Object-oriented+programming>
> > .
> >
> > FWIW: I tried to explain some of these ideas pictorially in my Quora
> > answer: Clem Cole's answer to Is Fortran obsolete?
> > <https://www.quora.com/Is-Fortran-obsolete/answer/Clem-Cole> This is
> not to
> > denigrate other languages like Julia, Tensorflow etc. But the fact is
> that
> > the hammer has been improved and the *ways the nails are delivered has
> > changed*, but the *fundamental action provided* (fastening for nails and
> > scientific computation in the case of Fortran) has been unchanged because
> > it has proven to be the one of the best, if not the best to do the job it
> > is designed to do.
> >
> > That said, I offer the following code snippet, which my Intel 2018
> > compatible compiler accepts without any switches. Which is really a
> > remarkable comment about the women and men in the front-end team:
> >
> > C This FORTRAN program may be compiled and run on a Norsk Data
> > C computer running SINTRAN and the FTN compiler. It uses only
> > C FORTRAN reserved words, and contains just one numerical
> > C constant, in a character string (a format specifier). When
> > C you run it, it prints a well known mathematical construct...
> > C
> > C Even FORTRAN is a block structured programming language:
> > C
> > PROGRAM
> > ;PROGRAM;INTEGERIF,INTEGER,GOTO,IMPLICIT;REALREAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNA
> > AL,FORMAT,END;INTEGERLOGICAL;REALCOMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER
> > R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
> > *INTEGER*INTEGER-INTEGER-IF;CALLFUNCTION(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EX
> > XTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);CALL
> > LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER)
> > END
> > SUBROUTINEFUNCTIO
> > ON(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA
> > A,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);RETURN
> > END
> > SUBROUTINESUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,L
> > LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);INTEGERGOTO,IMPLICIT(GOTO),LOGICAL(GOTO),I
> > IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
> > ER,EXTERNAL-IF;IMPLICIT(RETURN)=LOGICAL(RETURN)+LOGICAL(RETURN-IF);
> > ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
> > XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$ '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
> > IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
> > =IF,GOTO;LOGICAL(RETURN)=IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;ENDDO
> > END
> > Running the program should yield:
> > 1
> > 1 1
> > 1 2 1
> > 1 3 3 1
> > 1 4 6 4 1
> > 1 5 10 10 5 1
> > 1 6 15 20 15 6 1
> > 1 7 21 35 35 21 7 1
> > 1 8 28 56 70 56 28 8 1
> > 1 9 36 84 126 126 84 36 9 1
> > 1 10 45 120 210 252 210 120 45 10 1
> > 1 11 55 165 330 462 462 330 165 55 11 1
> > 1 12 66 220 495 792 924 792 495 220 66 12 1
> >
>
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From clemc at ccc.com Thu Dec 5 01:08:37 2019
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2019 10:08:37 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2P-X+3neMBdK=PZ1jdZLs78Vu7dbsfvd2P+h1PTn2BX4g@mail.gmail.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
<CACNPpeZwuv97EOPwd-WWyiVLKb5VSyUwxJ41J+A1Zrq4=gP1Sw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2P-X+3neMBdK=PZ1jdZLs78Vu7dbsfvd2P+h1PTn2BX4g@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2PX-jXWCVnAPULi=GLKH_W7YsCMcpwfon4hRG_eq13i8Q@mail.gmail.com>
BTW: we called that test snippet "Eklund.f" in honor of Dave Eklund who was
the 'main man' behind DEC and Intel's Fortran compilers for many, many
years (he finally retired a few years back). Among other things, Dave was
always looking for interesting fixed format test cases. To be fair, when
I first tripped over the code snippet around the time Dave was retiring, I
sent it to him (and the rest of the Fortran compiler team). The "HP"
Alpha/Itanium compilers (*ie.* the DEC GEM based ones) were fine with it.
At the time, the Intel compiler accepted the deck without error but tossed
cookies in the runtime. Lori Menard and I filled a bug report and she
added it to the Intel Fortran regression test suite.
Here is a version of the same deck that is a tad more intelligible and more
likely to be accepted by lessor compiler front-ends:
PROGRAM BLOCK
INTEGER I1,I2,I3,I4,I5
DIMENSION I1(13),I2(13)
I4=1
I5=2
I3=13
CALL PASCAL(I1,I2,I3,I4,I5)
END
SUBROUTINE PASCAL(IP1,IP2,IP3,IP4,IP5)
INTEGER IP3,IP1(IP3),IP2(IP3),IP4,IP5
INTEGER IP6,IP7
DO IP6=IP4,IP3
DO IP7=IP5,IP6-IP4
IP1(IP7)=IP2(IP7)+IP2(IP7-IP4)
ENDDO
IP1(IP4)=IP4
IP1(IP6)=IP4
DO IP7=IP4,IP3-IP6
WRITE(*,'(" "$)')
ENDDO
DO IP7=IP4,IP6
WRITE(*,'(I4$)') IP1(IP7)
ENDDO
WRITE(*,*)
DO IP7=IP4,IP3
IP2(IP7)=IP1(IP7)
ENDDO
ENDDO
END
On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 9:54 AM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> Intel ifort <https://software.intel.com/en-us/fortran-compilers> which as
> one of my friends like to say "has the DEC Fortran compiler DNA ground up
> and reinserted" ;-)
>
> On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 12:41 AM Wesley Parish <wobblygong at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I've just run that little program through gfortran without switches
>> (naming it pyramid.for) and it comes up with:
>>
>> pyramid.for:25:6:
>>
>> ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
>> 1
>> Error: Bad continuation line at (1)
>> pyramid.for:12:9:
>>
>> R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
>> 1
>> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
>> pyramid.for:23:56:
>>
>> IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
>> 1
>> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
>> pyramid.for:25:52:
>>
>> ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
>> 1
>> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
>> pyramid.for:26:43:
>>
>> XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$ '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
>> 1
>> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
>> pyramid.for:27:62:
>>
>> IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
>> 1
>> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
>> pyramid.for:23:34:
>>
>> IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
>> 1
>> Warning: Deleted feature: Loop variable at (1) must be integer
>> pyramid.for:15:17:
>>
>> LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER)
>> 1
>> Warning: Rank mismatch in argument ‘implicit’ at (1) (rank-1 and
>> scalar) [-Wargument-mismatch]
>>
>> I think gfortran must have '--strict' on by default. I might try it
>> with the OpenWatcom Fortran compiler next - if it'll install on my
>> current Linux box.
>>
>> Just out of interest, what is your current Fortran 2018 compiler?
>>
>> Wesley Parish
>>
>> On 12/4/19, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 2:56 AM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >> As every computer programmer should know, John Backus was emitted in
>> >> 1924;
>> >> he
>> >> gave us the BNF syntax, but the sod also gave us that FORTRAN
>> >> obscenity...
>> >>
>> > Be careful, Fortran still pays a lot of bills (I like to say that it has
>> > paid my salary for nearly 45 years and I don't program in it - I'm an OS
>> > guy). But Fortran >>is<< the #1 language for anything scientific and I
>> > don't think that is going away in the future or really change its
>> position
>> > in popularity for a number of reasons (my analog is the QWERTY keyboard
>> -
>> > that ship has sailed and it's not economically interesting). There are a
>> > number of places to check this out, but try looking at Archer AC Code
>> > Status
>> > <http://www.archer.ac.uk/status/codes/>, which is an interesting HPC
>> usage
>> > site in the UK. Note that Fortran is by far the leading programming
>> > language used for ‘production’ (there are other sites that offer similar
>> > data, I'll leave it to the reader to find them).
>> >
>> > Trivia: there is no way that FORTRAN can be described in any syntax; it
>> is
>> >> completely ad-hoc.
>> >
>> > Again, be careful with such observations. First off, I'm fairly sure
>> that
>> > the Intel Compiler teams (ifort
>> > <https://software.intel.com/en-us/fortran-compilers>) use a parser
>> > generator for parts of the ifort front-end. (Paul W might know more
>> details
>> > as he once worked in that technology). As I understand it, the
>> front-end
>> > does have a number of special cases in it, so your observation is
>> partially
>> > true, but the language definition is not 'completely ad-hoc'.
>> >
>> > The facts are that the language my father learned in the early 1960s
>> > (FORTRAN-II) and the language I learned in the late 60's/early 1970s
>> > (FORTRAN-IV) are not the same language as today's Fortran-2018, i.e. the
>> > language definition has hardly been static. Said in another way, about a
>> > year ago, a new standard for Fortran 2018 standard was released – see
>> > Fortran
>> > 2018 (Formerly Fortran 2015) <https://wg5-fortran.org/f2018.html> and
>> > it actually
>> > offers support for ‘modern’ ideas such as object-oriented programming:
>> > Object-oriented
>> > programming in Fortran Wiki
>> > <http://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Object-oriented+programming>
>> > .
>> >
>> > FWIW: I tried to explain some of these ideas pictorially in my Quora
>> > answer: Clem Cole's answer to Is Fortran obsolete?
>> > <https://www.quora.com/Is-Fortran-obsolete/answer/Clem-Cole> This is
>> not to
>> > denigrate other languages like Julia, Tensorflow etc. But the fact is
>> that
>> > the hammer has been improved and the *ways the nails are delivered has
>> > changed*, but the *fundamental action provided* (fastening for nails and
>> > scientific computation in the case of Fortran) has been unchanged
>> because
>> > it has proven to be the one of the best, if not the best to do the job
>> it
>> > is designed to do.
>> >
>> > That said, I offer the following code snippet, which my Intel 2018
>> > compatible compiler accepts without any switches. Which is really a
>> > remarkable comment about the women and men in the front-end team:
>> >
>> > C This FORTRAN program may be compiled and run on a Norsk Data
>> > C computer running SINTRAN and the FTN compiler. It uses only
>> > C FORTRAN reserved words, and contains just one numerical
>> > C constant, in a character string (a format specifier). When
>> > C you run it, it prints a well known mathematical construct...
>> > C
>> > C Even FORTRAN is a block structured programming language:
>> > C
>> > PROGRAM
>> > ;PROGRAM;INTEGERIF,INTEGER,GOTO,IMPLICIT;REALREAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNA
>> > AL,FORMAT,END;INTEGERLOGICAL;REALCOMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER
>> > R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
>> > *INTEGER*INTEGER-INTEGER-IF;CALLFUNCTION(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EX
>> > XTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);CALL
>> > LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER)
>> > END
>> > SUBROUTINEFUNCTIO
>> > ON(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA
>> > A,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);RETURN
>> > END
>> > SUBROUTINESUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,L
>> > LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);INTEGERGOTO,IMPLICIT(GOTO),LOGICAL(GOTO),I
>> > IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
>> > ER,EXTERNAL-IF;IMPLICIT(RETURN)=LOGICAL(RETURN)+LOGICAL(RETURN-IF);
>> > ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
>> > XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$ '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
>> > IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
>> > =IF,GOTO;LOGICAL(RETURN)=IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;ENDDO
>> > END
>> > Running the program should yield:
>> > 1
>> > 1 1
>> > 1 2 1
>> > 1 3 3 1
>> > 1 4 6 4 1
>> > 1 5 10 10 5 1
>> > 1 6 15 20 15 6 1
>> > 1 7 21 35 35 21 7 1
>> > 1 8 28 56 70 56 28 8 1
>> > 1 9 36 84 126 126 84 36 9 1
>> > 1 10 45 120 210 252 210 120 45 10 1
>> > 1 11 55 165 330 462 462 330 165 55 11 1
>> > 1 12 66 220 495 792 924 792 495 220 66 12 1
>> >
>>
>
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From clemc at ccc.com Thu Dec 5 01:14:59 2019
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2019 10:14:59 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <CACNPpeZwuv97EOPwd-WWyiVLKb5VSyUwxJ41J+A1Zrq4=gP1Sw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
<CACNPpeZwuv97EOPwd-WWyiVLKb5VSyUwxJ41J+A1Zrq4=gP1Sw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2NOBFn9qbMzr2BdAesyZkk9+8roMnca69F85OozEWx-pw@mail.gmail.com>
Wesley - one more thing. When you copy the original card deck, please
remember that because it's fixed format so make sure you have the proper
number of leading spaces after your cut/paste it (it did when I inserted
into the email). If you drop any leading spaces or try to use a tab, it's
likely that the fixed format parser for continuation lines will get
confused.
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From dave at horsfall.org Thu Dec 5 10:08:47 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 11:08:47 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
The ARPAnet reached four nodes on this day in 1969 (anyone know their names?);
at least one "history" site reckoned the third node was connected in 1977 (and
I'm still waiting for a reply to my correction). Well, I can believe that
perhaps there were only three left by then...
Hmmm... According to my notes, the nodes were UCSB, UCLA, SRI, and Utah.
-- Dave
From lm at mcvoy.com Thu Dec 5 14:19:40 2019
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2019 20:19:40 -0800
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com>
I'd love to know the order of nodes joining and how that was scored.
I've been told that UW-Madison "was the 11th IMP on the arpanet" but I'm
pretty sure that is not true. My guess is that there are the original
IMPs that were arpanet, then there was an expansion to educational sites
and Madison was 11 on that. Or something like that.
Anyone know?
On Thu, Dec 05, 2019 at 11:08:47AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> The ARPAnet reached four nodes on this day in 1969 (anyone know their
> names?); at least one "history" site reckoned the third node was connected
> in 1977 (and I'm still waiting for a reply to my correction). Well, I can
> believe that perhaps there were only three left by then...
>
> Hmmm... According to my notes, the nodes were UCSB, UCLA, SRI, and Utah.
>
> -- Dave
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
From wobblygong at gmail.com Thu Dec 5 16:11:36 2019
From: wobblygong at gmail.com (Wesley Parish)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 19:11:36 +1300
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2NOBFn9qbMzr2BdAesyZkk9+8roMnca69F85OozEWx-pw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
<CACNPpeZwuv97EOPwd-WWyiVLKb5VSyUwxJ41J+A1Zrq4=gP1Sw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2NOBFn9qbMzr2BdAesyZkk9+8roMnca69F85OozEWx-pw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CACNPpeYz1USAzAddKJ1qeS9BdrHLXAfc_XXVDgrhYjRKkzhxCA@mail.gmail.com>
Well, gfortran swallowed eklund.f without a complain and threw me out
an a.out, which ran as expected.
I've got a Fortran IV manual lying around somewhere: I suppose life
not too short for a bit of gratuitous masochism? (I also had an old
Cobol manual of the same vintage, but I gave it to a friend who
believe it or not, wanted to learn it. Gratuitous masochism indeed.
Cobol! ;/ )
Thanks
Wesley
On 12/5/19, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> Wesley - one more thing. When you copy the original card deck, please
> remember that because it's fixed format so make sure you have the proper
> number of leading spaces after your cut/paste it (it did when I inserted
> into the email). If you drop any leading spaces or try to use a tab, it's
> likely that the fixed format parser for continuation lines will get
> confused.
>
From lars at nocrew.org Thu Dec 5 18:01:32 2019
From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2019 08:01:32 +0000
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com> (Larry McVoy's message of
"Wed, 4 Dec 2019 20:19:40 -0800")
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <7w5zivryjn.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
Larry McVoy wrote:
> I'd love to know the order of nodes joining and how that was scored.
Some early RFC describe nodes being connected.
For example, RFC 254 says "The MIT PDP-10(AI) system uses the ITS
operating system and is similar to the MIT PDP-10(DMCG) system. At
present the host is not connected to the ARPANET." RFC 342 has it as a
"network user", and in RFC 344 it's updated to a server.
Are the IMP numbers any indication which order they were connected?
From wkt at tuhs.org Thu Dec 5 19:10:25 2019
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 19:10:25 +1000
Subject: [COFF] Xinu
Message-ID: <20191205091025.GA31876@minnie.tuhs.org>
Wesley wrote:
> I would second that. His Xinu book was one of the two that helped
> demystify operating systems for me.
> Wesley Parish
I've moved this over to COFF as it's only tangentially related to Unix.
As a undergraduate I found Doug Comer's Xinu book in the library. At the
time, I was learning C but I only had an Apple ][+ clone which didn't
have a C compiler.
Therefore (obviously), I hand-recoded Xinu in assembly, built a 555
timer circuit, connected it to the IRQ line on the 6502 and got Xinu
up and running (with a shell, with my own ls, with redirection etc.)
on my Apple ][+ clone:
ftp://minnie.tuhs.org/pub/apple2/apple2xinu.tar.gz
Yes, crazy I know.
Cheers, Warren
From clemc at ccc.com Thu Dec 5 22:37:35 2019
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 07:37:35 -0500
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <7w5zivryjn.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com> <7w5zivryjn.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2NQFCU+sFe-f0tJ8n_F9gBn-HAeh-bBHkBLLQCAjXVpmA@mail.gmail.com>
On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 3:01 AM Lars Brinkhoff <lars at nocrew.org> wrote:
> Larry McVoy wrote:
> > I'd love to know the order of nodes joining and how that was scored.
>
>
> Are the IMP numbers any indication which order they were connected?
> ______________________________________________
It was always my understanding the numbers were the order they were
activated by bbn
>
> --
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
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From clemc at ccc.com Thu Dec 5 22:38:58 2019
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 07:38:58 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <CACNPpeYz1USAzAddKJ1qeS9BdrHLXAfc_XXVDgrhYjRKkzhxCA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
<CACNPpeZwuv97EOPwd-WWyiVLKb5VSyUwxJ41J+A1Zrq4=gP1Sw@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2NOBFn9qbMzr2BdAesyZkk9+8roMnca69F85OozEWx-pw@mail.gmail.com>
<CACNPpeYz1USAzAddKJ1qeS9BdrHLXAfc_XXVDgrhYjRKkzhxCA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Ps9jg-SSTohLbpQBFt_0h43_wy=v-qCpvvi7hCOs4dRw@mail.gmail.com>
Cool
On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 1:11 AM Wesley Parish <wobblygong at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, gfortran swallowed eklund.f without a complain and threw me out
> an a.out, which ran as expected.
>
> I've got a Fortran IV manual lying around somewhere: I suppose life
> not too short for a bit of gratuitous masochism? (I also had an old
> Cobol manual of the same vintage, but I gave it to a friend who
> believe it or not, wanted to learn it. Gratuitous masochism indeed.
> Cobol! ;/ )
>
> Thanks
>
> Wesley
>
> On 12/5/19, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> > Wesley - one more thing. When you copy the original card deck, please
> > remember that because it's fixed format so make sure you have the proper
> > number of leading spaces after your cut/paste it (it did when I inserted
> > into the email). If you drop any leading spaces or try to use a tab,
> it's
> > likely that the fixed format parser for continuation lines will get
> > confused.
> >
>
--
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
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From tih at hamartun.priv.no Fri Dec 6 03:03:12 2019
From: tih at hamartun.priv.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo)
Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2019 18:03:12 +0100
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
(Clem Cole's message of "Tue, 3 Dec 2019 08:44:38 -0500")
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <m2sglywvqn.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> writes:
> C This FORTRAN program may be compiled and run on a Norsk Data
> C computer running SINTRAN and the FTN compiler. [...]
...and just to uphold the pride of our old friends at Norsk Data, I'd
like to point out that the original version of that program looks even
nicer. It compiles properly using FTN (which is the older FORTRAN 77
compiler for the SINTRAN operating system), in this form (which should
explain the quip in the comment about a "block structured" language):
PROGRAM
;PROGRAM;INTEGERIF,INTEGER,GOTO,IMPLICIT;REALREAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNA
AL,FORMAT,END;INTEGERLOGICAL;REALCOMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER
R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
*INTEGER*INTEGER-INTEGER-IF;CALLFUNCTION(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EX
XTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);CALL
LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);END;SUBROUTINEFUNCTIO
ON(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA
A,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);RETURN;END;SUBROUTINESUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,L
LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);INTEGERGOTO,IMPLICIT(GOTO),LOGICAL(GOTO),I
IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
ER,EXTERNAL-IF;IMPLICIT(RETURN)=LOGICAL(RETURN)+LOGICAL(RETURN-IF);
;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$ '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
=IF,GOTO;LOGICAL(RETURN)=IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;ENDDO;END
Clem had to break some lines to placate his more modern compiler. :)
-tih
--
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay
From gingell at computer.org Fri Dec 6 04:20:06 2019
From: gingell at computer.org (Rob Gingell)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 10:20:06 -0800
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <29ffe051-066c-7675-f7cc-5356b17c34de@computer.org>
On 12/4/2019 8:19 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> I'd love to know the order of nodes joining and how that was scored.
There are a number of sites that contain fragments of the history of
sites/nodes joining the ARPAnet. Wikipedia's entry for ARPAnet has some
of that along with several logical maps of the network (though these
stopped including host #'s pretty early on.) One decent concise
accounting is at https://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/
A collection of maps of the ARPAnet over time is available from the
Computer History Museum at
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102646704
As others have noted the numbers were assigned chronologically starting
at UCLA's Sigma-7 system (1) such that the first 4 were:
1: UCLA: Sigma-7
2: SRI: SDS-940
3: UCSB: IBM 360/75
4: Utah: PDP-10
I know Case-10 was node 13 (more colloquially referenced as 15, in
octal, which was how we saw the numbers and updated the host table).
I've forgotten at this point whether the assignments were documented in
RFCs or other assigned numbers documents from the Network Information
Center (NIC).
> I've been told that UW-Madison "was the 11th IMP on the arpanet" but I'm
> pretty sure that is not true.
You're correct that it's not true. Not sure when/if UW-Madison was on
the ARPAnet. Hosts did get decommissioned and I think the numbers were
eventually recycled so it's possible a later site got a lower number but
now it's my turn not to be sure.
> My guess is that there are the original
> IMPs that were arpanet, then there was an expansion to educational sites
> and Madison was 11 on that. Or something like that.
ARPAnet "vs." educational sites isn't a distinction that existed. The
first 4 nodes consisted of 3 educational institutions and a
university-affiliated research organization (SRI). In 1971 when there
were 23 hosts and 15 IMPs more than half of the organizations were
universities though contractors and labs started appearing pretty
rapidly. IMPs apart from ARPAnet weren't a thing really.
There's a podcast, "50 Things that Made the Modern Economy" that had a
fairly recent episode about IMPs that was pretty interesting. Had a
economic, Adam Smith-like spin on the emergence of IMPs as an example of
specialization in an ecosystem which was a big part of "why IMPs": the
network was kept homogeneous among the IMPs and whatever weirdness was
associated with the different hosts (mostly) contained to the host-IMP
interface.
Those first 4 nodes were all pretty different systems. Some differences
percolated up to the applications protocols, TELNET's options set was
complicated by the heterogeneity of the hosts in a protocol architecture
pre-dating things like "presentation layers" in network models.
If you peruse the maps at the Computer History museum site you can see
some real diversity in the systems. For instance in April 1971 Burroughs
had an IMP and a B6500 front-ending the under-construction ILLIAC-IV
(later moved to Ames and front-ended by a couple of PDP-10s). PARC's
MAXC appears in the mid-1970s. One of the goals in creating the ARPAnet
was to provide access to unique resources to a wider research community
and you can certainly see a lot of unique systems in those early maps.
From lars at nocrew.org Fri Dec 6 04:33:11 2019
From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2019 18:33:11 +0000
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <29ffe051-066c-7675-f7cc-5356b17c34de@computer.org> (Rob
Gingell's message of "Thu, 5 Dec 2019 10:20:06 -0800")
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com>
<29ffe051-066c-7675-f7cc-5356b17c34de@computer.org>
Message-ID: <7wtv6epqqg.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
Rob Gingell wrote:
> 1: UCLA: Sigma-7
> 2: SRI: SDS-940
> 3: UCSB: IBM 360/75
> 4: Utah: PDP-10
[...]
> If you peruse the maps at the Computer History museum site you can see
> some real diversity in the systems. For instance in April 1971
> Burroughs had an IMP and a B6500 front-ending the under-construction
> ILLIAC-IV (later moved to Ames and front-ended by a couple of
> PDP-10s). PARC's MAXC appears in the mid-1970s.
Maybe this is a good time to ask if anyone knows whether any of those
diverse systems has software preserved? Specifically, the
implementation of the NCP and 1822 Host-to-IMP protocols?
From clemc at ccc.com Fri Dec 6 04:44:58 2019
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 13:44:58 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <m2sglywvqn.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
<m2sglywvqn.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2PfQxXMHi_qCUhf7bNAFvLthzChftJcQ6oBvCuT_C9OnA@mail.gmail.com>
Actually, I never saw this version before today. Thanks!!!
Clem
On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 12:11 PM Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via COFF <
coff at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> writes:
>
> > C This FORTRAN program may be compiled and run on a Norsk Data
> > C computer running SINTRAN and the FTN compiler. [...]
>
> ...and just to uphold the pride of our old friends at Norsk Data, I'd
> like to point out that the original version of that program looks even
> nicer. It compiles properly using FTN (which is the older FORTRAN 77
> compiler for the SINTRAN operating system), in this form (which should
> explain the quip in the comment about a "block structured" language):
>
> PROGRAM
> ;PROGRAM;INTEGERIF,INTEGER,GOTO,IMPLICIT;REALREAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNA
> AL,FORMAT,END;INTEGERLOGICAL;REALCOMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER
> R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
> *INTEGER*INTEGER-INTEGER-IF;CALLFUNCTION(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EX
> XTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);CALL
> LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);END;SUBROUTINEFUNCTIO
> ON(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA
> A,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);RETURN;END;SUBROUTINESUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,L
> LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);INTEGERGOTO,IMPLICIT(GOTO),LOGICAL(GOTO),I
> IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
> ER,EXTERNAL-IF;IMPLICIT(RETURN)=LOGICAL(RETURN)+LOGICAL(RETURN-IF);
> ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
> XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$ '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
> IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
> =IF,GOTO;LOGICAL(RETURN)=IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;ENDDO;END
>
> Clem had to break some lines to placate his more modern compiler. :)
>
> -tih
> --
> Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
> of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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From clemc at ccc.com Fri Dec 6 05:03:09 2019
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 14:03:09 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2PfQxXMHi_qCUhf7bNAFvLthzChftJcQ6oBvCuT_C9OnA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
<m2sglywvqn.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
<CAC20D2PfQxXMHi_qCUhf7bNAFvLthzChftJcQ6oBvCuT_C9OnA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2P-OqcUm6+-OxB+EXwP9jPoAArp_P70TfyJO3j2QWi6tg@mail.gmail.com>
Tom,
Thanks again. Now, I'm going to hazard a guess as to why the version in
the wild (which I had posted) had removed an F4 extension from your updated
version. The END statements were intermixed with other text. The
original Norsk Data compiler clearly did not care.
I just tried with ifort (201 version) and I get:
% ifort xxx.f
xxx.f(7): error #5141: END statement must be only statement on line
LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);END;SUBROUTINEFUNCTIO
-------------------------------------------------------^
xxx.f(9): error #5141: END statement must be only statement on line
A,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);RETURN;END;SUBROUTINESUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,L
-----------------------------------------^
compilation aborted for xxx.f (code 1)
% diff eklund.f xxx.f
1,8d0
< C This FORTRAN program may be compiled and run on a Norsk Data
< C computer running SINTRAN and the FTN compiler. It uses only
< C FORTRAN reserved words, and contains just one numerical
< C constant, in a character string (a format specifier). When
< C you run it, it prints a well known mathematical construct...
< C
< C Even FORTRAN is a block structured programming language:
< C
15,17c7
< LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER)
< END
< SUBROUTINEFUNCTIO
---
> LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);END;SUBROUTINEFUNCTIO
19,21c9
< A,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);RETURN
< END
< SUBROUTINESUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,L
---
> A,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);RETURN;END;SUBROUTINESUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,L
28,29c16
< =IF,GOTO;LOGICAL(RETURN)=IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;ENDDO
< END
---
> =IF,GOTO;LOGICAL(RETURN)=IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;ENDDO;END
I just checked with Dave (and I'd also ask Dr. Fortran, Stan Witlock; but
we lost him last year sadly). Dave's comment was that even in the old F4
standard (which he has of course), PROGRAM, END and STOP cards all need to
be on separate cards (lines) and can not be intermixed with continuation.
I suspect when this was sent out to wherever I picked it up a few years
ago, the code had been changed to be 'pure F4' ;-)
On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 1:44 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> Actually, I never saw this version before today. Thanks!!!
> Clem
>
> On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 12:11 PM Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via COFF <
> coff at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>> Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> writes:
>>
>> > C This FORTRAN program may be compiled and run on a Norsk Data
>> > C computer running SINTRAN and the FTN compiler. [...]
>>
>> ...and just to uphold the pride of our old friends at Norsk Data, I'd
>> like to point out that the original version of that program looks even
>> nicer. It compiles properly using FTN (which is the older FORTRAN 77
>> compiler for the SINTRAN operating system), in this form (which should
>> explain the quip in the comment about a "block structured" language):
>>
>> PROGRAM
>> ;PROGRAM;INTEGERIF,INTEGER,GOTO,IMPLICIT;REALREAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNA
>> AL,FORMAT,END;INTEGERLOGICAL;REALCOMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER
>> R;DOFORIF=INTEGER,INTEGER;ENDDO;INTEGER=IF+IF;GOTO=INTEGER*INTEGER*
>> *INTEGER*INTEGER-INTEGER-IF;CALLFUNCTION(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EX
>> XTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);CALL
>> LSUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);END;SUBROUTINEFUNCTIO
>> ON(IMPLICIT,REAL,DIMENSION,EXTERNAL,FORMAT,END,LOGICAL,COMPLEX,DATA
>> A,CALL,ASSIGN,CHARACTER);RETURN;END;SUBROUTINESUBROUTINE(IMPLICIT,L
>> LOGICAL,GOTO,IF,INTEGER);INTEGERGOTO,IMPLICIT(GOTO),LOGICAL(GOTO),I
>> IF,INTEGER,EXTERNAL,RETURN;DOFOREXTERNAL=IF,GOTO;DOFORRETURN=INTEGE
>> ER,EXTERNAL-IF;IMPLICIT(RETURN)=LOGICAL(RETURN)+LOGICAL(RETURN-IF);
>> ;ENDDO;IMPLICIT(IF)=IF;IMPLICIT(EXTERNAL)=IF;DOFORRETURN=IF,GOTO-EX
>> XTERNAL;WRITE(IF,'(''$ '')');ENDDO;DOFORRETURN=IF,EXTERNAL;WRITE(I
>> IF,'(''$''I4)')IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;WRITE(IF,'( /)');DOFORRETURN=
>> =IF,GOTO;LOGICAL(RETURN)=IMPLICIT(RETURN);ENDDO;ENDDO;END
>>
>> Clem had to break some lines to placate his more modern compiler. :)
>>
>> -tih
>> --
>> Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
>> of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay
>> _______________________________________________
>> COFF mailing list
>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>>
>
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From lm at mcvoy.com Fri Dec 6 05:05:28 2019
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 11:05:28 -0800
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <29ffe051-066c-7675-f7cc-5356b17c34de@computer.org>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com>
<29ffe051-066c-7675-f7cc-5356b17c34de@computer.org>
Message-ID: <20191205190528.GT32688@mcvoy.com>
On Thu, Dec 05, 2019 at 10:20:06AM -0800, Rob Gingell wrote:
> On 12/4/2019 8:19 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > I'd love to know the order of nodes joining and how that was scored.
>
> There are a number of sites that contain fragments of the history of
> sites/nodes joining the ARPAnet. Wikipedia's entry for ARPAnet has some of
> that along with several logical maps of the network (though these stopped
> including host #'s pretty early on.) One decent concise accounting is at
> https://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/
That seems to list the 1st 4 and then none? Or did I miss it?
> A collection of maps of the ARPAnet over time is available from the Computer
> History Museum at
> https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102646704
Too blurry to read the names.
From tih at hamartun.priv.no Fri Dec 6 05:50:50 2019
From: tih at hamartun.priv.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo)
Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2019 20:50:50 +0100
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2P-OqcUm6+-OxB+EXwP9jPoAArp_P70TfyJO3j2QWi6tg@mail.gmail.com>
(Clem Cole's message of "Thu, 5 Dec 2019 14:03:09 -0500")
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
<m2sglywvqn.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
<CAC20D2PfQxXMHi_qCUhf7bNAFvLthzChftJcQ6oBvCuT_C9OnA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2P-OqcUm6+-OxB+EXwP9jPoAArp_P70TfyJO3j2QWi6tg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <m2muc6sg9x.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> writes:
> I suspect when this was sent out to wherever I picked it up a few
> years ago, the code had been changed to be 'pure F4' ;-)
The version I have is the one that was floating around the SINTRAN
environment at the Norwegian Institute of Technology when I was there
back in the eighties. I don't know where it originally came from, but
it was printed in the in-house information publication RUN-NYTT in 1982.
It's on page 9 of this issue:
https://folk.ntnu.no/klv/IT-historie-ntnu/Run-nytt-1977-93/run-nytt-1-1982.pdf
The comment at the top of the version you posted is actually my own
translation of the text introducing the printed program text.
-tih
--
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay
From gingell at computer.org Fri Dec 6 06:41:29 2019
From: gingell at computer.org (Rob Gingell)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 12:41:29 -0800
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <20191205190528.GT32688@mcvoy.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com>
<29ffe051-066c-7675-f7cc-5356b17c34de@computer.org>
<20191205190528.GT32688@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <f5da99d5-33c5-5bb4-582d-9e023479aa05@computer.org>
On 12/5/2019 11:05 AM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 05, 2019 at 10:20:06AM -0800, Rob Gingell wrote:
>> One decent concise accounting is at
>> https://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/
>
> That seems to list the 1st 4 and then none? Or did I miss it?
There's another list of the membership (but not the addresses) under
1971 but the descriptions peter out after that.
I was doing some digging for old HOSTS.TXT files, one of which would
give a roughly chronological order, and a sequence of which would allow
for reconstructing the history, but didn't come up with anything.
Well, I did find one file from 1973 that seemed to have the information
but the trouble is that file was a document scan that stopped after the
first page.
Once internetworking experiments started there were sequences of
"assigned number" RFCs that showed the evolution of internetworking and
component networks but I came up empty looking for just the plain old
HOSTS.TXT files.
>> A collection of maps of the ARPAnet over time is available from the Computer
>> History Museum at
>> https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102646704
>
> Too blurry to read the names.
Admittedly a couple of the maps are hard to process even with zooming in
but a lot of them are very readable even to my old eyes. And yeah, they
don't answer the history question except by inference through visual
comparison. Just couldn't find anything better.
From clemc at ccc.com Fri Dec 6 06:56:07 2019
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 15:56:07 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus!
In-Reply-To: <m2muc6sg9x.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912031852160.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<CAC20D2ON8bFuXc_SQcgsa1mTzhKMRAJXwAyCTJuRhmCX=pgksg@mail.gmail.com>
<m2sglywvqn.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
<CAC20D2PfQxXMHi_qCUhf7bNAFvLthzChftJcQ6oBvCuT_C9OnA@mail.gmail.com>
<CAC20D2P-OqcUm6+-OxB+EXwP9jPoAArp_P70TfyJO3j2QWi6tg@mail.gmail.com>
<m2muc6sg9x.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2M6gKfMX=AtQhHpHwCUYWsWSXVhp516BGFABE5rZp7wOA@mail.gmail.com>
Tom - this all makes perfect sense. Very cool. You are undoubtedly the
source!!! I'm sure I must have gotten it from you, but I admit that I
>>had<< thought I had seen it elsewhere, earlier before Dave had retired
(which was a few years back before Intel moved the team from NH to MA).
That's why I asked had you posted to somewhere else earlier maybe?
FWIW: Google translates the intro para to be: which is similar to your
translation. You rewrote ND-10... to Norsk Data which makes complete sense
by making the code more understandable out of the context of the document.
The FORTRAN program below can be compiled and executed on an ND-10/100 FTN
compiler. It consists only of FORTRAN reserved words and 'contains only one
numeric constant (it is in a text string). The program produces a known
mathematical "figure".
The program is an example that even FORTRAN is a block structured language.
I note the original as the PROGRAM card is by itself, but not indented.
Which is somewhat consistent with the Dave's observation of F4 requiring
PROGRAM, END and STOP to be on seperate card.
BTW: given today's exchange, I sent the compiler team a note to state, we
got it from you and I've asked them to add a pointer to this document your
provided also.
Thanks again,
Clem
On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 2:50 PM Tom Ivar Helbekkmo <tih at hamartun.priv.no>
wrote:
> Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> writes:
>
> > I suspect when this was sent out to wherever I picked it up a few
> > years ago, the code had been changed to be 'pure F4' ;-)
>
> The version I have is the one that was floating around the SINTRAN
> environment at the Norwegian Institute of Technology when I was there
> back in the eighties. I don't know where it originally came from, but
> it was printed in the in-house information publication RUN-NYTT in 1982.
>
> It's on page 9 of this issue:
>
>
> https://folk.ntnu.no/klv/IT-historie-ntnu/Run-nytt-1977-93/run-nytt-1-1982.pdf
>
> The comment at the top of the version you posted is actually my own
> translation of the text introducing the printed program text.
>
> -tih
> --
> Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
> of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay
>
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From amp1ron at gmail.com Fri Dec 6 11:19:48 2019
From: amp1ron at gmail.com (amp1ron at gmail.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 20:19:48 -0500
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <f5da99d5-33c5-5bb4-582d-9e023479aa05@computer.org>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com>
<29ffe051-066c-7675-f7cc-5356b17c34de@computer.org>
<20191205190528.GT32688@mcvoy.com>
<f5da99d5-33c5-5bb4-582d-9e023479aa05@computer.org>
Message-ID: <011f01d5abd3$41187a30$c3496e90$@gmail.com>
Maybe some of these hosts files that Lars Brinkhoff gathered together will help:
https://github.com/ttkzw/hosts.txt
-----Original Message-----
From: COFF <coff-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org> On Behalf Of Rob Gingell
Sent: Thursday, December 5, 2019 3:41 PM
To: Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com>
Cc: coff at minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
On 12/5/2019 11:05 AM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 05, 2019 at 10:20:06AM -0800, Rob Gingell wrote:
>> One decent concise accounting is at
>> https://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/
>
> That seems to list the 1st 4 and then none? Or did I miss it?
There's another list of the membership (but not the addresses) under
1971 but the descriptions peter out after that.
I was doing some digging for old HOSTS.TXT files, one of which would
give a roughly chronological order, and a sequence of which would allow
for reconstructing the history, but didn't come up with anything.
Well, I did find one file from 1973 that seemed to have the information
but the trouble is that file was a document scan that stopped after the
first page.
Once internetworking experiments started there were sequences of
"assigned number" RFCs that showed the evolution of internetworking and
component networks but I came up empty looking for just the plain old
HOSTS.TXT files.
>> A collection of maps of the ARPAnet over time is available from the Computer
>> History Museum at
>> https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102646704
>
> Too blurry to read the names.
Admittedly a couple of the maps are hard to process even with zooming in
but a lot of them are very readable even to my old eyes. And yeah, they
don't answer the history question except by inference through visual
comparison. Just couldn't find anything better.
_______________________________________________
COFF mailing list
COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
From gingell at computer.org Fri Dec 6 13:25:38 2019
From: gingell at computer.org (Rob Gingell)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 19:25:38 -0800
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <011f01d5abd3$41187a30$c3496e90$@gmail.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com>
<29ffe051-066c-7675-f7cc-5356b17c34de@computer.org>
<20191205190528.GT32688@mcvoy.com>
<f5da99d5-33c5-5bb4-582d-9e023479aa05@computer.org>
<011f01d5abd3$41187a30$c3496e90$@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e56716da-f014-469e-e3b3-cfe99512b861@computer.org>
On 12/5/19 5:19 PM, amp1ron at gmail.com wrote:
> Maybe some of these hosts files that Lars Brinkhoff gathered together will help:
>
> https://github.com/ttkzw/hosts.txt
Thanks for the pointer. I had come across those. The trouble is, for the
NCP era, there's only one host file in the collection. The rest are all
from the post-Internet transition (and thus the numbers can't be
inferred to convey a probable chronological sequence.)
And for the one from the NCP era, it's the one that only has the first
page and so it's missing a bunch of stuff. (It's not really a HOSTS.TXT
file but a prettified annotated edition with other information, and so
the file in the repository is a PDF of a scanned physical printout.)
Still even that one page adds some information. From the information
exchanged previously we had hosts 1 through 4, and then host 13. And the
likely matches for about two dozen numbers. And the fragment from the
one page in the repository adds 5 (though it's clear from the comments
that it was a recycled number), 9, 12, confirms 13, 14, 15, 16, and then
a smattering of others up to 232.
Some of the liaison names are tickling memories of long ago acquaintances!
I had thought that once upon a time there was an archive of a mid-1970s
TENEX distribution, like 1.33 or 1.34. The distribution might have
embedded a stale HOSTS.TXT file that would have been complete for the
time. But I haven't managed to find it again.
Still none of this really answers Larry's query in a satisfying way. I
imagine somewhere there's just a ledger that has the answer to the
question I thought he posed about who showed up when with what on the
ARPAnet. The collected papers of someone like Jon Postel might have
something of that nature (but a brief search doesn't reveal an archive
literally like that) but then substantial body of his work lives on in
the RFC library.
From amp1ron at gmail.com Fri Dec 6 14:19:19 2019
From: amp1ron at gmail.com (amp1ron at gmail.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 23:19:19 -0500
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <e56716da-f014-469e-e3b3-cfe99512b861@computer.org>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com>
<29ffe051-066c-7675-f7cc-5356b17c34de@computer.org>
<20191205190528.GT32688@mcvoy.com>
<f5da99d5-33c5-5bb4-582d-9e023479aa05@computer.org>
<011f01d5abd3$41187a30$c3496e90$@gmail.com>
<e56716da-f014-469e-e3b3-cfe99512b861@computer.org>
Message-ID: <01c501d5abec$55091db0$ff1b5910$@gmail.com>
I see there's a LOT of hosts files in at least several different formats archived on saildart. A duck duck go search for "site:saildart.org hst.net filedate 197" found me lots of files dated in the 1970s. In the first few pages of search results there's this 1974-04-04 file https://www.saildart.org/NAMES%5BNET,SYS%5D3 . At least that's in the mid-70s date range you're looking for. And maybe there are even older files on saildart. I've pulled out the entries from that file with the lowest 20 numbers and ordered them by number. Between number 1 and 23 in that 1974-04-04 file hosts 17, 20, and 22 are missing. So even if hosts hadn't yet been renumbered, by 1974-04-04 it appears some hosts were dropped from at least this file NET.SYS .
; Here we define the names (long and short) of the sites and their numbers
X <UCLA-NMC>,NMC,1,0
X <SRI-ARC>,NIC,2,noslf!noelf
X UCSB,UCSB,3,0
X UTAH,UTAH,4,noslf!noelf
X <BBN-NCC>,NCC,5,noslf!noelf
X <MIT-MLTX>,MLTX,6,0
X <RAND-65>,RAND,7,0
X SDC,SDC,8,0
X <HARV-10>,HARV,9,0
X <LL-67>,LL67,10,0
X <SU-AI>,SAIL,11,noelf
X <ILL-11>,ILL11,12,0
X CASE,CASE,13,0
X <CMU-10B>,CMU,14,0
X <NASA-AMES>,AMES,15,noslf!noelf
X <AMES-67>,AME67,16,0
X RADC,RADC,18,0
X NBS,NBS,19,0
X TINKER,OCAF,21,0
X USC,USC,23,0
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Gingell <gingell at gmail.com> On Behalf Of Rob Gingell
Sent: Thursday, December 5, 2019 10:26 PM
To: amp1ron at gmail.com; 'Larry McVoy' <lm at mcvoy.com>
Cc: coff at minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
On 12/5/19 5:19 PM, amp1ron at gmail.com wrote:
> Maybe some of these hosts files that Lars Brinkhoff gathered together will help:
>
> https://github.com/ttkzw/hosts.txt
Thanks for the pointer. I had come across those. The trouble is, for the
NCP era, there's only one host file in the collection. The rest are all
from the post-Internet transition (and thus the numbers can't be
inferred to convey a probable chronological sequence.)
And for the one from the NCP era, it's the one that only has the first
page and so it's missing a bunch of stuff. (It's not really a HOSTS.TXT
file but a prettified annotated edition with other information, and so
the file in the repository is a PDF of a scanned physical printout.)
Still even that one page adds some information. From the information
exchanged previously we had hosts 1 through 4, and then host 13. And the
likely matches for about two dozen numbers. And the fragment from the
one page in the repository adds 5 (though it's clear from the comments
that it was a recycled number), 9, 12, confirms 13, 14, 15, 16, and then
a smattering of others up to 232.
Some of the liaison names are tickling memories of long ago acquaintances!
I had thought that once upon a time there was an archive of a mid-1970s
TENEX distribution, like 1.33 or 1.34. The distribution might have
embedded a stale HOSTS.TXT file that would have been complete for the
time. But I haven't managed to find it again.
Still none of this really answers Larry's query in a satisfying way. I
imagine somewhere there's just a ledger that has the answer to the
question I thought he posed about who showed up when with what on the
ARPAnet. The collected papers of someone like Jon Postel might have
something of that nature (but a brief search doesn't reveal an archive
literally like that) but then substantial body of his work lives on in
the RFC library.
From amp1ron at gmail.com Fri Dec 6 14:43:43 2019
From: amp1ron at gmail.com (amp1ron at gmail.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 23:43:43 -0500
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <01c501d5abec$55091db0$ff1b5910$@gmail.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912051108010.99521@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191205041940.GP32688@mcvoy.com>
<29ffe051-066c-7675-f7cc-5356b17c34de@computer.org>
<20191205190528.GT32688@mcvoy.com>
<f5da99d5-33c5-5bb4-582d-9e023479aa05@computer.org>
<011f01d5abd3$41187a30$c3496e90$@gmail.com>
<e56716da-f014-469e-e3b3-cfe99512b861@computer.org>
<01c501d5abec$55091db0$ff1b5910$@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <01ce01d5abef$bddf9e60$399edb20$@gmail.com>
I searched for files on saildart that include the text SRI-ARC . The oldest one I can find is file NET.SYS dated 1973-04-08: https://www.saildart.org/NAMES[NET,SYS]4
It appears to be an older version of the 1974-04-04 file I mentioned in my previous message.
My apologies for top-posting. I'll stop posting now as I don’t have any ideas for finding hosts files older than that one.
-----Original Message-----
From: amp1ron at gmail.com <amp1ron at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 5, 2019 11:19 PM
To: 'Rob Gingell' <gingell at computer.org>; 'Larry McVoy' <lm at mcvoy.com>
Cc: coff at minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: RE: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
I see there's a LOT of hosts files in at least several different formats archived on saildart. A duck duck go search for "site:saildart.org hst.net filedate 197" found me lots of files dated in the 1970s. In the first few pages of search results there's this 1974-04-04 file https://www.saildart.org/NAMES%5BNET,SYS%5D3 . At least that's in the mid-70s date range you're looking for. And maybe there are even older files on saildart. I've pulled out the entries from that file with the lowest 20 numbers and ordered them by number. Between number 1 and 23 in that 1974-04-04 file hosts 17, 20, and 22 are missing. So even if hosts hadn't yet been renumbered, by 1974-04-04 it appears some hosts were dropped from at least this file NET.SYS .
; Here we define the names (long and short) of the sites and their numbers
X <UCLA-NMC>,NMC,1,0
X <SRI-ARC>,NIC,2,noslf!noelf
X UCSB,UCSB,3,0
X UTAH,UTAH,4,noslf!noelf
X <BBN-NCC>,NCC,5,noslf!noelf
X <MIT-MLTX>,MLTX,6,0
X <RAND-65>,RAND,7,0
X SDC,SDC,8,0
X <HARV-10>,HARV,9,0
X <LL-67>,LL67,10,0
X <SU-AI>,SAIL,11,noelf
X <ILL-11>,ILL11,12,0
X CASE,CASE,13,0
X <CMU-10B>,CMU,14,0
X <NASA-AMES>,AMES,15,noslf!noelf
X <AMES-67>,AME67,16,0
X RADC,RADC,18,0
X NBS,NBS,19,0
X TINKER,OCAF,21,0
X USC,USC,23,0
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Gingell <gingell at gmail.com> On Behalf Of Rob Gingell
Sent: Thursday, December 5, 2019 10:26 PM
To: amp1ron at gmail.com; 'Larry McVoy' <lm at mcvoy.com>
Cc: coff at minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
On 12/5/19 5:19 PM, amp1ron at gmail.com wrote:
> Maybe some of these hosts files that Lars Brinkhoff gathered together will help:
>
> https://github.com/ttkzw/hosts.txt
Thanks for the pointer. I had come across those. The trouble is, for the
NCP era, there's only one host file in the collection. The rest are all
from the post-Internet transition (and thus the numbers can't be
inferred to convey a probable chronological sequence.)
And for the one from the NCP era, it's the one that only has the first
page and so it's missing a bunch of stuff. (It's not really a HOSTS.TXT
file but a prettified annotated edition with other information, and so
the file in the repository is a PDF of a scanned physical printout.)
Still even that one page adds some information. From the information
exchanged previously we had hosts 1 through 4, and then host 13. And the
likely matches for about two dozen numbers. And the fragment from the
one page in the repository adds 5 (though it's clear from the comments
that it was a recycled number), 9, 12, confirms 13, 14, 15, 16, and then
a smattering of others up to 232.
Some of the liaison names are tickling memories of long ago acquaintances!
I had thought that once upon a time there was an archive of a mid-1970s
TENEX distribution, like 1.33 or 1.34. The distribution might have
embedded a stale HOSTS.TXT file that would have been complete for the
time. But I haven't managed to find it again.
Still none of this really answers Larry's query in a satisfying way. I
imagine somewhere there's just a ledger that has the answer to the
question I thought he posed about who showed up when with what on the
ARPAnet. The collected papers of someone like Jon Postel might have
something of that nature (but a brief search doesn't reveal an archive
literally like that) but then substantial body of his work lives on in
the RFC library.
From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sat Dec 7 03:33:38 2019
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2019 12:33:38 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
Message-ID: <20191206173338.2BB0218C07E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
> From: Lars Brinkhoff
>> PARC's MAXC appears in the mid-1970s.
> Maybe this is a good time to ask if anyone knows whether any of those
> diverse systems has software preserved? Specifically, the
> implementation of the NCP and 1822 Host-to-IMP protocols?
Both MAXC's were PDP-10 re-implementations, and ran TENEX. So the basic
system is still around, not sure if they had any interesting local hacks
(well, probably PUP support; MIT tried to put it in MIT-XX, so it may
still exist on thats backup tapes).
> From: Rob Gingell gingell at computer.org
> A collection of maps of the ARPAnet over time is available from the
> Computer History Museum
Interesting; I also have a large collection of maps:
http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/arpanet.html#Maps
all with hi-res versions (click on the thumbnails). Some of the ones
at the CHM I don't have, but the coverage time-wise is similar.
I also have a modest collection of hosts.txt files, ranging from
Jul-77 to Apr-94.
> I've forgotten at this point whether the assignments were documented in
> RFCs or other assigned numbers documents from the Network Information Center
The first 'Assigned numbers' RFC was #739, from November 1977. It never
contained host addresses. There were a very few early RFC's which contained
host adresses (#226, #229, #236), but pretty quickly host addresses were done
via the hosts.txt file, distributed from the NIC. (Given the churn rate, using
RFC's didn't make sense.) Early RFCs about this are #606 and #627. There were
a bunch of RFC's that reported on 'host status' (e.g. how their software was
doing), but their goal was different.
PS: A number of people are leaving out the definite article before 'ARPANET';
this seems to be popular these days (especially in the UK it seems, not sure
why), but it is incorrect.
Also, the correct spelling is all capitals (check e.g. through old RFCs).
Until of course the AP gets their hands on it (I'm breathlessly awaiting
their announcement that the U.S. President's reference is to be referred
to as the 'white house').
Noel
From lm at mcvoy.com Sat Dec 7 04:02:07 2019
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2019 10:02:07 -0800
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <20191206173338.2BB0218C07E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20191206173338.2BB0218C07E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20191206180207.GZ32688@mcvoy.com>
On Fri, Dec 06, 2019 at 12:33:38PM -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> Interesting; I also have a large collection of maps:
>
> http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/arpanet.html#Maps
And there it is, October 1981, UWISC is on the arpanet. Looks like there
were about 70 IMPs at the time.
This is awesome info Noel, thanks!
From lars at nocrew.org Sat Dec 7 05:38:50 2019
From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2019 19:38:50 +0000
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <20191206173338.2BB0218C07E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> (Noel Chiappa's
message of "Fri, 6 Dec 2019 12:33:38 -0500 (EST)")
References: <20191206173338.2BB0218C07E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <7w7e39p7lh.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > Maybe this is a good time to ask if anyone knows whether any of those
> > diverse systems has software preserved? Specifically, the
> > implementation of the NCP and 1822 Host-to-IMP protocols?
>
> Both MAXC's were PDP-10 re-implementations, and ran TENEX. So the
> basic system is still around
That's kind of the thing. All NCP implementations I know about are for
DEC computers. Nothing for IBM, SDS, etc.
From dave at horsfall.org Mon Dec 9 09:50:50 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2019 10:50:50 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, Grace Hopper!
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912091049470.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
We gained Rear Admiral Grace Hopper on this day in 1906; known as "Amazing
Grace", she was a remarkable woman, both in computers and the Navy. She coined
the term "debugging" when she extracted a moth from a set of relay contacts from
a computer (the Harvard Mk I) and wrote "computer debugged" in the log, taping
the deceased Lepidoptera in there as well. She was convinced that computers
could be programmed in an English-like language and developed Flow-Matic, which
in turn became, err, COBOL... She was posthumously awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 2016 by Barack Obama.
-- Dave
From grog at lemis.com Mon Dec 9 10:56:22 2019
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2019 11:56:22 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Origins of bugs (was: Happy birthday, Grace Hopper!)
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912091049470.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912091049470.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20191209005621.GB95360@eureka.lemis.com>
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 10:50:50 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> We gained Rear Admiral Grace Hopper on this day in 1906; known as "Amazing
> Grace", she was a remarkable woman, both in computers and the Navy. She coined
> the term "debugging" when she extracted a moth from a set of relay contacts from
> a computer (the Harvard Mk I) and wrote "computer debugged" in the log, taping
> the deceased Lepidoptera in there as well.
FWIW, the term "debug" predates this incident. OED has:
1943 Bluefield (W. Va.) Daily Tel. 26 Mar. 10/4 (caption)
‘Debugging’ Buna. Sister Mary Thomas adjusts a gas absorption
tube in her Washington laboratory where she's conducting
research to eliminate ‘bugs’ from the processing of butadiene
into synthetic rubber.
My understanding is that Hopper would have known this usage, and the
real point of this story was that she found a real live bug causing
the bug, a kind of physical pun.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
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From stewart at serissa.com Mon Dec 9 11:09:02 2019
From: stewart at serissa.com (Lawrence Stewart)
Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2019 20:09:02 -0500
Subject: [COFF] ARPAnet now 4 nodes
In-Reply-To: <20191206173338.2BB0218C07E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20191206173338.2BB0218C07E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <C4141374-114F-4DBB-A2F3-48271AA51804@serissa.com>
> On 2019, Dec 6, at 12:33 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu <mailto:jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>> wrote:
>
>> From: Lars Brinkhoff
>
>>> PARC's MAXC appears in the mid-1970s.
>
>> Maybe this is a good time to ask if anyone knows whether any of those
>> diverse systems has software preserved? Specifically, the
>> implementation of the NCP and 1822 Host-to-IMP protocols?
>
> Both MAXC's were PDP-10 re-implementations, and ran TENEX. So the basic
> system is still around, not sure if they had any interesting local hacks
> (well, probably PUP support; MIT tried to put it in MIT-XX, so it may
> still exist on thats backup tapes).
>
I am pretty sure that the NCP implementation for the MAXCs was the TENEX version, with local mods by Ed Taft.
I designed the Alto BBN-1822 interface, which was used for connecting to the Bay Area Packet Radio network and also used for PARC-MAXC2. MAXC1 had a Nova as the front end, about which I know nothing, but MAXC2 used an Alto. Both machines were 40 bit word microcoded machines programmed to be PDP-10s. Corporate wanted PARC to use SDS but the CSL folks wanted a 10, so they had to build one.
The software specifically for the Alto 1822 survives, oddly enough, because Marc Verdiell (CuriousMarc)’s
Alto Restoration project showed my old 1822 development disk pack in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxFv2JNNW-A <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxFv2JNNW-A> I found the bits at
http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/Indigo/Alto-1822/.index.html <http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/Indigo/Alto-1822/.index.html>
I only tested my own code up to successful loopback to the local IMP, then Ed took over. I did the low level code for the PRNet interface, which was not NCP, and hooked it up to Hal Murray’s Mesa implmentation of the Pup stack.
-Larry
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From dave at horsfall.org Tue Dec 10 06:50:38 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2019 07:50:38 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, Ada Lovelace and JFO!
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912100744220.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Bit hard to classify this one; separate posts since COFF was created?
Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace (and daughter of Lord Byron), was
born on this day in 1815; arguably the world's first computer programmer and a
highly independent woman, she saw the potential in Charles Babbage's
new-fangled invention.
J.F.Ossanna was given unto us on this day in 1928; a prolific programmer, he
not only had a hand in developing Unix but also gave us the ROFF series.
Who'ld've thought that two computer greats would share the same birthday?
-- Dave
From athornton at gmail.com Tue Dec 10 14:03:50 2019
From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2019 21:03:50 -0700
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Ada Lovelace and JFO!
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912100744220.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912100744220.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <D94493C0-1783-4634-9A79-8B273EDC2F6D@gmail.com>
> On Dec 9, 2019, at 1:50 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> Who'ld've thought that two computer greats would share the same birthday?
Well, are there more than 19 of them?
Adam
From athornton at gmail.com Tue Dec 10 15:08:51 2019
From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2019 22:08:51 -0700
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix
In-Reply-To: <201912100030.xBA0UNwL106373@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
References: <201912100030.xBA0UNwL106373@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
Message-ID: <7FD6DB85-8A17-4FB9-BD54-306069C56F34@gmail.com>
> On Dec 9, 2019, at 5:30 PM, Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>
> Moo and hunt-the-wumpus got quite a lot of play
> both in the lab and at home. Wump was an instant
> hit with my son who was 4 or 5 years old at the
> time.
>
> Amusingly, I speculated on how to generate degree-3
> graphs for wump, but obviously not very deeply. It
> was only much later that I realized the graph
> always had the same topology--a dodecahedron.
You know, maybe we’ve been looking at this wrong the whole time (I blame Yob).
Maybe the caves aren’t the vertices of a dodecahedron. Maybe they’re the faces of an icosahedron.
Adam
From dave at horsfall.org Fri Dec 13 11:34:51 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2019 12:34:51 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Happy birthday, Ada Lovelace and JFO!
In-Reply-To: <20191209224022.swlqk4pkkjsheb6d@localhost.localdomain>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912100744220.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191209224022.swlqk4pkkjsheb6d@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912131233010.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Tue, 10 Dec 2019, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
>> Who'ld've thought that two computer greats would share the same
>> birthday?
>
> Anyone who thinks there are at least 23 greats would bet that way. ;-)
Yeah, I know; I'd temporarily forgotten the Birthday Paradox :-(
-- Dave
From dave at horsfall.org Fri Dec 13 16:14:23 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2019 17:14:23 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Origins of bugs (was: Happy birthday, Grace Hopper!)
In-Reply-To: <20191209005621.GB95360@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912091049470.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191209005621.GB95360@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912131712460.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Mon, 9 Dec 2019, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> FWIW, the term "debug" predates this incident. OED has:
[...]
Thanks for that.
> My understanding is that Hopper would have known this usage, and the
> real point of this story was that she found a real live bug causing the
> bug, a kind of physical pun.
Quite likely...
-- Dave
From rudi.j.blom at gmail.com Sat Dec 14 15:33:59 2019
From: rudi.j.blom at gmail.com (Rudi Blom)
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2019 12:33:59 +0700
Subject: [COFF] SCO UNIX 3.2V4.2 and kernel trap on 'fast' pentium
Message-ID: <CAMYpm865xwexbkHSkcwdQZJrKhSSLmPXAeTnJJccn21h5fMS_g@mail.gmail.com>
Around 1997 I and others had a problem with SCO UNIX 3.2V.4.2 on
'faster' Pentium CPUs. Faster defined as probably 200MHz or more.
There were at least two patches as far as I remember and maybe SLS
uod464a.
I didn't look at that time but now I'm wondering if other Unixes had
similar problems. Either commercial versions or free ones.
Anyone here who encountered such problems on other Unixes?
One patch had
"This is due to executing an invalid instruction in kernel mode (trap
6 is for an invalid instruction; a user process which does this will
simply die with a core dump). If your particular problem is a double
panic and it doesn't leave a system memory dump in whatever device
you've chosen for dumps (usually /dev/swap), apply the following
patch.
This is due to a problem in the kernel's querytlb() routine, which may
allow the Pentium to execute a 386-specific instruction which is not
supported on the Pentium. The cure involves patching a kernel module
using _fst. (see part 1 on where to find /etc/_fst). Go into the
/etc/conf/pack.d/kernel directory. We're going to work on locore.o, so
make a backup and then run _fst -w locore.o - The conversation between
you and _fst goes like this (the * is a prompt from _fst; don't type
it or any of _fst's responses):"
https://scofaq.aplawrence.com/FAQ_scotec3ktrap6.html
A second one was
"> Follow the additional instructions below ONLY if you now get
> a k_trap type 0 panic after following the instructions in
> IT os/2366. To correct a k_trap 0, do the following:
>
> # cd /etc/conf/pack.d/pit
> # cp Driver.o Driver.orig
> # _fst -w Driver.o
> * spinwait+2D?w F989 FEE2
> * $q
> # cd /etc/conf/cf.d
> # ./link_unix -y
>
> Reboot your system. The above patch corrects a problem with
> a software delay loop that was optimized out by the compiler
> and which can cause panics on faster processors."
Cheers,
uncle rubl
From crossd at gmail.com Sun Dec 15 00:43:25 2019
From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross)
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2019 20:13:25 +0530
Subject: [COFF] SCO UNIX 3.2V4.2 and kernel trap on 'fast' pentium
In-Reply-To: <CAMYpm865xwexbkHSkcwdQZJrKhSSLmPXAeTnJJccn21h5fMS_g@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAMYpm865xwexbkHSkcwdQZJrKhSSLmPXAeTnJJccn21h5fMS_g@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W6h8tLVnYxEBdvnVe-jHSRqgghUvE3FxEi1a0qRqg771g@mail.gmail.com>
I don't recall anything like that during that timeframe, but I wasn't using
SCO. From the descriptions, they sound pretty system-specific. The second,
in particular, sounds a lot like the entire lock was optimized away....
That's necessarily pretty particular to a kernel/compiler pair.
On Sat, Dec 14, 2019, 11:04 AM Rudi Blom <rudi.j.blom at gmail.com> wrote:
> Around 1997 I and others had a problem with SCO UNIX 3.2V.4.2 on
> 'faster' Pentium CPUs. Faster defined as probably 200MHz or more.
> There were at least two patches as far as I remember and maybe SLS
> uod464a.
>
> I didn't look at that time but now I'm wondering if other Unixes had
> similar problems. Either commercial versions or free ones.
>
> Anyone here who encountered such problems on other Unixes?
>
> One patch had
>
> "This is due to executing an invalid instruction in kernel mode (trap
> 6 is for an invalid instruction; a user process which does this will
> simply die with a core dump). If your particular problem is a double
> panic and it doesn't leave a system memory dump in whatever device
> you've chosen for dumps (usually /dev/swap), apply the following
> patch.
>
> This is due to a problem in the kernel's querytlb() routine, which may
> allow the Pentium to execute a 386-specific instruction which is not
> supported on the Pentium. The cure involves patching a kernel module
> using _fst. (see part 1 on where to find /etc/_fst). Go into the
> /etc/conf/pack.d/kernel directory. We're going to work on locore.o, so
> make a backup and then run _fst -w locore.o - The conversation between
> you and _fst goes like this (the * is a prompt from _fst; don't type
> it or any of _fst's responses):"
> https://scofaq.aplawrence.com/FAQ_scotec3ktrap6.html
>
> A second one was
> "> Follow the additional instructions below ONLY if you now get
> > a k_trap type 0 panic after following the instructions in
> > IT os/2366. To correct a k_trap 0, do the following:
> >
> > # cd /etc/conf/pack.d/pit
> > # cp Driver.o Driver.orig
> > # _fst -w Driver.o
> > * spinwait+2D?w F989 FEE2
> > * $q
> > # cd /etc/conf/cf.d
> > # ./link_unix -y
> >
> > Reboot your system. The above patch corrects a problem with
> > a software delay loop that was optimized out by the compiler
> > and which can cause panics on faster processors."
>
> Cheers,
> uncle rubl
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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From rudi.j.blom at gmail.com Sun Dec 15 11:36:30 2019
From: rudi.j.blom at gmail.com (Rudi Blom)
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2019 08:36:30 +0700
Subject: [COFF] SCO UNIX 3.2V4.2 and kernel trap on 'fast' pentium
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W6h8tLVnYxEBdvnVe-jHSRqgghUvE3FxEi1a0qRqg771g@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAMYpm865xwexbkHSkcwdQZJrKhSSLmPXAeTnJJccn21h5fMS_g@mail.gmail.com>
<CAEoi9W6h8tLVnYxEBdvnVe-jHSRqgghUvE3FxEi1a0qRqg771g@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAMYpm8512O5t3V38bL4s7xP7sWb24hfQmpJAMiPcCSEP7CJfQA@mail.gmail.com>
It maybe that the problem was specific for COMPAQ servers of type
Proliant/1600, Proliant/3000 and the HX580. In tat case it was maybe
more 'compaq special' specific rather than a UNIX 'feature' :-)
On 14/12/2019, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't recall anything like that during that timeframe, but I wasn't using
> SCO. From the descriptions, they sound pretty system-specific. The second,
> in particular, sounds a lot like the entire lock was optimized away....
> That's necessarily pretty particular to a kernel/compiler pair.
>
> On Sat, Dec 14, 2019, 11:04 AM Rudi Blom <rudi.j.blom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Around 1997 I and others had a problem with SCO UNIX 3.2V.4.2 on
>> 'faster' Pentium CPUs. Faster defined as probably 200MHz or more.
>> There were at least two patches as far as I remember and maybe SLS
>> uod464a.
>>
>> I didn't look at that time but now I'm wondering if other Unixes had
>> similar problems. Either commercial versions or free ones.
>>
>> Anyone here who encountered such problems on other Unixes?
>>
>> One patch had
>>
>> "This is due to executing an invalid instruction in kernel mode (trap
>> 6 is for an invalid instruction; a user process which does this will
>> simply die with a core dump). If your particular problem is a double
>> panic and it doesn't leave a system memory dump in whatever device
>> you've chosen for dumps (usually /dev/swap), apply the following
>> patch.
>>
>> This is due to a problem in the kernel's querytlb() routine, which may
>> allow the Pentium to execute a 386-specific instruction which is not
>> supported on the Pentium. The cure involves patching a kernel module
>> using _fst. (see part 1 on where to find /etc/_fst). Go into the
>> /etc/conf/pack.d/kernel directory. We're going to work on locore.o, so
>> make a backup and then run _fst -w locore.o - The conversation between
>> you and _fst goes like this (the * is a prompt from _fst; don't type
>> it or any of _fst's responses):"
>> https://scofaq.aplawrence.com/FAQ_scotec3ktrap6.html
>>
>> A second one was
>> "> Follow the additional instructions below ONLY if you now get
>> > a k_trap type 0 panic after following the instructions in
>> > IT os/2366. To correct a k_trap 0, do the following:
>> >
>> > # cd /etc/conf/pack.d/pit
>> > # cp Driver.o Driver.orig
>> > # _fst -w Driver.o
>> > * spinwait+2D?w F989 FEE2
>> > * $q
>> > # cd /etc/conf/cf.d
>> > # ./link_unix -y
>> >
>> > Reboot your system. The above patch corrects a problem with
>> > a software delay loop that was optimized out by the compiler
>> > and which can cause panics on faster processors."
>>
>> Cheers,
>> uncle rubl
>> _______________________________________________
>> COFF mailing list
>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>>
>
From rudi.j.blom at gmail.com Sun Dec 15 18:02:59 2019
From: rudi.j.blom at gmail.com (Rudi Blom)
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2019 15:02:59 +0700
Subject: [COFF] SCO UNIX 3.2V4.2 and kernel trap on 'fast' pentium
Message-ID: <CAMYpm84QEV5z-f89BNwPmOEYwrNT=UoUgVmjr1jB9nz5DdBO2Q@mail.gmail.com>
Blame early morning and typing BEFORE having had coffee.
The "HX580" should be "Digital Prioris HX590"
Sorry,
uncle rubl
From robert at timetraveller.org Mon Dec 16 11:33:32 2019
From: robert at timetraveller.org (Robert Brockway)
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2019 11:33:32 +1000 (AEST)
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
The author seems to have taken some care to get decent data sources.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI
From dave at horsfall.org Tue Dec 17 07:17:56 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2019 08:17:56 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, Ken Iverson!
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912170811001.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Ken Iverson was given unto us in 1920; a pioneer in computer science, he gave
us APL (actually not a bad language; it was, err, *concise* and grew on you
after a while[*]) which was used to develop the microcode for the /360 series.
[*]
My brother (a car freak) knew that I was into computers, and wanted me to work
out the final drive ratios of various gearbox and diff combinations etc. I
blew him away the next day with pages of output (he thought it would take me
ages) generated with a one-line APL\360 program :-)
-- Dave
From paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com Wed Dec 18 08:54:46 2019
From: paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com (Paul Palmer)
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2019 16:54:46 -0600
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
Message-ID: <CAM6uckn6-VmpvrFwLWQ5ZwDVgrNsJwG-5B0G5q5c25QAswrV8A@mail.gmail.com>
Didn't see perl. My all-time favorite. And I've used most of the others.
On Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 7:41 PM Robert Brockway <robert at timetraveller.org>
wrote:
> The author seems to have taken some care to get decent data sources.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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From clemc at ccc.com Wed Dec 18 09:02:46 2019
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2019 18:02:46 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <CAM6uckn6-VmpvrFwLWQ5ZwDVgrNsJwG-5B0G5q5c25QAswrV8A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<CAM6uckn6-VmpvrFwLWQ5ZwDVgrNsJwG-5B0G5q5c25QAswrV8A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2O=-b1LX_-ucQvgTivByxMiSxA-ArbZPk-UfhV98dL-rQ@mail.gmail.com>
Perl comes and goes - it there. I was surprised to Kotlin but not Go.
On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 5:55 PM Paul Palmer <paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Didn't see perl. My all-time favorite. And I've used most of the others.
>
> On Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 7:41 PM Robert Brockway <robert at timetraveller.org>
> wrote:
>
>> The author seems to have taken some care to get decent data sources.
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI
>> _______________________________________________
>> COFF mailing list
>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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From dave at horsfall.org Wed Dec 18 13:30:23 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2019 14:30:23 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] In memoriam: Konrad Zuse
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912181424440.963@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Inventor of the Z3 (arguably the world's first programmable computer), we
lost it in the 1943 Berlin bombing; we lost the inventor himself in 1995
on this day.
How things could be different...
-- Dave
From crossd at gmail.com Fri Dec 20 18:49:49 2019
From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross)
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2019 03:49:49 -0500
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] AP-3 minicomputer
In-Reply-To: <4C8A6FE1-3A6E-4F28-AABE-793AABD3F4C4@mcjones.org>
References: <0FCF3C9F0F6C2441BC6C13C6E49BAEF101DC35B21D@EX-MB1.hq.computerhistory.org>
<4C8A6FE1-3A6E-4F28-AABE-793AABD3F4C4@mcjones.org>
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W7faOgFNxW-NtXtLjGys8ThGwbVKM7Kvqv+qG8PeEquZg@mail.gmail.com>
On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 1:52 PM Paul McJones <paul at mcjones.org> wrote:
> Computer History Museum curator Dag Spicer passed along a question from
> former CHM curator Alex Bochannek that I thought someone on this list might
> be able to answer. The paper "The M4 Macro Processor†by Kernighan and
> Ritchie says:
>
> > The M4 macro processor is an extension of a macro processor called M3
> which was written by D. M. Ritchie for the AP-3 minicomputer; M3 was in
> turn based on a macro processor implemented for [B. W. Kernighan and P. J.
> Plauger, Software Tools, Addison-Wesley, Inc., 1976].
>
> Alex and Dag would like to learn more about this AP-3 minicomputer — can
> anyone help?
[I recommend that follow-ups go to coff, which is Cc'ed here]
I took a short stab at this, but can find little beyond references in the
aforementioned M4 paper.
I did, however, run across this:
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp78b04770a000100110018-1
This appears to be a declassified letter written to the US Air Force at
Bowling Green Air Force Base in regards to spare parts fo the AP-3
computer; dated October 19, 1966. The list of parts seem reasonable for a
minicomputer, and it further seems reasonable to believe that this may be
related to the same type of computer referenced in the M4 paper. However,
details of the sending party have been redacted, and there is nothing
pointing to the identity of the manufacturer.
Sadly, that's all that seems available. I wonder if, perhaps, Doug McIlroy
(Cc'ed directly to float this to the top of his stack) can shed more light
on the topic?
- Dan C.
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From ats at offog.org Fri Dec 20 23:30:17 2019
From: ats at offog.org (Adam Sampson)
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2019 13:30:17 +0000
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] AP-3 minicomputer
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W7faOgFNxW-NtXtLjGys8ThGwbVKM7Kvqv+qG8PeEquZg@mail.gmail.com>
(Dan Cross's message of "Fri, 20 Dec 2019 03:49:49 -0500")
References: <0FCF3C9F0F6C2441BC6C13C6E49BAEF101DC35B21D@EX-MB1.hq.computerhistory.org>
<4C8A6FE1-3A6E-4F28-AABE-793AABD3F4C4@mcjones.org>
<CAEoi9W7faOgFNxW-NtXtLjGys8ThGwbVKM7Kvqv+qG8PeEquZg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <y2a7e2razva.fsf@offog.org>
Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> writes:
> https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp78b04770a000100110018-1
> However, details of the sending party have been redacted, and there is
> nothing pointing to the identity of the manufacturer.
The 1704689 flip-flop PCB is a Bendix part:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/263975518840
This page has a picture of a "Nistri-Bendix AP/3 analytical
stereoplotter (a special purpose instrument primarily used to compile
contour maps and terrain profiles)", which sounds like the kind of thing
the Air Force would have:
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol15no1/images/index.html
There's more information online about the AP/1, AP/2 etc., which consist
of a digital computer driving some specalised plotting hardware -- so it
sounds like the letter's talking about spares for the computer part of
the AP/3. Whether that's the same as the AP-3 you're after, though...
--
Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org> <http://offog.org/>
From alex at bochannek.com Sat Dec 21 03:14:24 2019
From: alex at bochannek.com (Alex Bochannek)
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2019 09:14:24 -0800
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] AP-3 minicomputer
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W7faOgFNxW-NtXtLjGys8ThGwbVKM7Kvqv+qG8PeEquZg@mail.gmail.com>
(Dan Cross's message of "Fri, 20 Dec 2019 03:49:49 -0500")
References: <0FCF3C9F0F6C2441BC6C13C6E49BAEF101DC35B21D@EX-MB1.hq.computerhistory.org>
<4C8A6FE1-3A6E-4F28-AABE-793AABD3F4C4@mcjones.org>
<CAEoi9W7faOgFNxW-NtXtLjGys8ThGwbVKM7Kvqv+qG8PeEquZg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <m2v9qahqbz.fsf@bochannek.com>
Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> writes:
> On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 1:52 PM Paul McJones <paul at mcjones.org>
> wrote:
>
> Computer History Museum curator Dag Spicer passed along a
> question from former CHM curator Alex Bochannek that I thought
> someone on this list might be able to answer. The paper "The M4
> Macro Processor†by Kernighan and Ritchie says:
>
> > The M4 macro processor is an extension of a macro processor
> called M3 which was written by D. M. Ritchie for the AP-3
> minicomputer; M3 was in turn based on a macro processor
> implemented for [B. W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger, Software
> Tools, Addison-Wesley, Inc., 1976].
>
> Alex and Dag would like to learn more about this AP-3
> minicomputer — can anyone help?
>
>
> [I recommend that follow-ups go to coff, which is Cc'ed here]
>
> I took a short stab at this, but can find little beyond references in
> the aforementioned M4 paper.
>
> I did, however, run across this:Â https://www.cia.gov/library/
> readingroom/document/cia-rdp78b04770a000100110018-1
>
> This appears to be a declassified letter written to the US Air Force
> at Bowling Green Air Force Base in regards to spare parts fo the AP-3
> computer; dated October 19, 1966. The list of parts seem reasonable
> for a minicomputer, and it further seems reasonable to believe that
> this may be related to the same type of computer referenced in the M4
> paper. However, details of the sending party have been redacted, and
> there is nothing pointing to the identity of the manufacturer.
Good find. The part numbers suggest Bendix.
> Sadly, that's all that seems available. I wonder if, perhaps, Doug
> McIlroy (Cc'ed directly to float this to the top of his stack) can
> shed more light on the topic?
>
> Â Â Â Â - Dan C.
>
>
>
--
Alex.
From grog at lemis.com Sun Dec 22 08:22:35 2019
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2019 09:22:35 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
Message-ID: <20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
On Monday, 16 December 2019 at 11:33:32 +1000, Robert Brockway wrote:
> The author seems to have taken some care to get decent data sources.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI
Interesting overview, but I have my doubts about its accuracy. Lisp
seems to have been too popular in the mid-1980s, and at the same time
he claims that Ada was the most popular language. Both seem highly
unlikely to me. And then JavaScript got off to a flying start: over
4% in Q2 1995, quite an impressive for a language that was introduced
in Q3 1995. So without much more proof I'd take it with a pinch of
salt.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
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From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Sun Dec 22 09:32:59 2019
From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen)
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2019 00:32:59 +0100
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
Message-ID: <9ac3bacacec6b3b75b3e1e0ccbb731e0@firemail.de>
'Interesting overview, but I have my doubts about its accuracy. Lisp
seems to have been too popular in the mid-1980s, and at the same time
he claims that Ada was the most popular language. Both seem highly
unlikely to me. '
fully agree. I never saw a lisp, ada job offer!
In the mid/late 1980s pascal and C were popular languages, whereas therestill were lots of cobol/fortran, mostly cobol, job offers.
From cym224 at gmail.com Sun Dec 22 10:42:10 2019
From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam)
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2019 19:42:10 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <eed0f64c-5cf3-7db4-f694-67b69d94cace@gmail.com>
On 12/21/19 17:22, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote (in part):
> On Monday, 16 December 2019 at 11:33:32 +1000, Robert Brockway wrote (in part):
>> The author seems to have taken some care to get decent data sources.
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI
> Interesting overview, but I have my doubts about its accuracy.
The author does not explicitly cite his sources.
From krewat at kilonet.net Mon Dec 23 02:51:12 2019
From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat)
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2019 11:51:12 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
Define "popular" - what's actually in use, versus what people want to
use. And job listings versus research. Both of those would lead to
different results ;)
On 12/21/2019 5:22 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> On Monday, 16 December 2019 at 11:33:32 +1000, Robert Brockway wrote:
>> The author seems to have taken some care to get decent data sources.
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI
> Interesting overview, but I have my doubts about its accuracy. Lisp
> seems to have been too popular in the mid-1980s, and at the same time
> he claims that Ada was the most popular language. Both seem highly
> unlikely to me. And then JavaScript got off to a flying start: over
> 4% in Q2 1995, quite an impressive for a language that was introduced
> in Q3 1995. So without much more proof I'd take it with a pinch of
> salt.
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
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From dave at horsfall.org Mon Dec 23 07:36:07 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2019 08:36:07 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Sun, 22 Dec 2019, Arthur Krewat wrote:
> Define "popular" - what's actually in use, versus what people want to
> use. And job listings versus research. Both of those would lead to
> different results ;)
I've been keeping a list of all the languages that I've ever used since I
was a stripling; it's up to 48, and that's counting all assembly languages
as one etc. That's about one language for every year that I've been a
programmer :-)
Yes, I try and teach myself a new language whenever possible; I'm
currently looking at Ruby as a lightweight replacement for Perl (I run
screaming from Python and its silly indentation), and Perl/Tk for a GUI
for some scripts that I wrote (mostly puzzle solvers).
-- Dave
From paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com Mon Dec 23 08:05:14 2019
From: paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com (Paul Palmer)
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2019 16:05:14 -0600
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <CAM6ucknvBvejeWWisohPB3eh5to4iuxFJ5hE+NX0kJ1cOXh+ug@mail.gmail.com>
I'd like to see your list.
I'm well over 20 but never listed them.
On Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 3:36 PM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Dec 2019, Arthur Krewat wrote:
>
> > Define "popular" - what's actually in use, versus what people want to
> > use. And job listings versus research. Both of those would lead to
> > different results ;)
>
> I've been keeping a list of all the languages that I've ever used since I
> was a stripling; it's up to 48, and that's counting all assembly languages
> as one etc. That's about one language for every year that I've been a
> programmer :-)
>
> Yes, I try and teach myself a new language whenever possible; I'm
> currently looking at Ruby as a lightweight replacement for Perl (I run
> screaming from Python and its silly indentation), and Perl/Tk for a GUI
> for some scripts that I wrote (mostly puzzle solvers).
>
> -- Dave
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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From grog at lemis.com Mon Dec 23 08:41:46 2019
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2019 09:41:46 +1100
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
Message-ID: <20191222224146.GX95360@eureka.lemis.com>
On Sunday, 22 December 2019 at 11:51:12 -0500, Arthur Krewat wrote:
> Define "popular" - what's actually in use, versus what people want to
> use. And job listings versus research. Both of those would lead to
> different results ;)
At the very least, I would expect the language to exist.
I didn't mention job listings.
Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
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From krewat at kilonet.net Tue Dec 24 03:04:05 2019
From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat)
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2019 12:04:05 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <7217cd90-a42a-68b2-dff1-4f90a1bf6063@kilonet.net>
On 12/22/2019 4:36 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> (I run screaming from Python and its silly indentation)
You and me, both, brother, you and me both ;)
From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Tue Dec 24 05:54:52 2019
From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen)
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2019 20:54:52 +0100
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <7217cd90-a42a-68b2-dff1-4f90a1bf6063@kilonet.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<7217cd90-a42a-68b2-dff1-4f90a1bf6063@kilonet.net>
Message-ID: <2faaeddb7acece00e4a7da6dd71b566c@firemail.de>
>>On 12/22/2019 4:36 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> >(I run screaming from Python and its silly indentation)
>You and me, both, brother, you and me both ;)
you are right. However take into consideration that py is very popular in Linux and certainly Freebsd too.
_______________________________________________
COFF mailing list
COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
From krewat at kilonet.net Tue Dec 24 07:59:04 2019
From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat)
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2019 16:59:04 -0500
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <2faaeddb7acece00e4a7da6dd71b566c@firemail.de>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<7217cd90-a42a-68b2-dff1-4f90a1bf6063@kilonet.net>
<2faaeddb7acece00e4a7da6dd71b566c@firemail.de>
Message-ID: <38aeb1a1-6a03-54d7-3cfb-62b281b5e60b@kilonet.net>
On 12/23/2019 2:54 PM, Thomas Paulsen wrote:
>>> On 12/22/2019 4:36 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>>> (I run screaming from Python and its silly indentation)
>> You and me, both, brother, you and me both ;)
> you are right. However take into consideration that py is very popular in Linux and certainly Freebsd too.
>
>
So is Taylor Swift ;)
From dspicer at computerhistory.org Tue Dec 24 05:50:18 2019
From: dspicer at computerhistory.org (Dag Spicer)
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2019 19:50:18 +0000
Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] AP-3 minicomputer
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W7faOgFNxW-NtXtLjGys8ThGwbVKM7Kvqv+qG8PeEquZg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <0FCF3C9F0F6C2441BC6C13C6E49BAEF101DC35B21D@EX-MB1.hq.computerhistory.org>
<4C8A6FE1-3A6E-4F28-AABE-793AABD3F4C4@mcjones.org>
<CAEoi9W7faOgFNxW-NtXtLjGys8ThGwbVKM7Kvqv+qG8PeEquZg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <0FCF3C9F0F6C2441BC6C13C6E49BAEF101DC3CEA11@EX-MB1.hq.computerhistory.org>
Wow — wonderful Dan, thanks for this!
And prospective thanks to anyone else for their thoughts…
Warm (in machine room) regards,
Dag
On Dec 20, 2019, at 12:49 AM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com<mailto:crossd at gmail.com>> wrote:
On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 1:52 PM Paul McJones <paul at mcjones.org<mailto:paul at mcjones.org>> wrote:
Computer History Museum curator Dag Spicer passed along a question from former CHM curator Alex Bochannek that I thought someone on this list might be able to answer. The paper "The M4 Macro Processor†by Kernighan and Ritchie says:
> The M4 macro processor is an extension of a macro processor called M3 which was written by D. M. Ritchie for the AP-3 minicomputer; M3 was in turn based on a macro processor implemented for [B. W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger, Software Tools, Addison-Wesley, Inc., 1976].
Alex and Dag would like to learn more about this AP-3 minicomputer — can anyone help?
[I recommend that follow-ups go to coff, which is Cc'ed here]
I took a short stab at this, but can find little beyond references in the aforementioned M4 paper.
I did, however, run across this: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp78b04770a000100110018-1
This appears to be a declassified letter written to the US Air Force at Bowling Green Air Force Base in regards to spare parts fo the AP-3 computer; dated October 19, 1966. The list of parts seem reasonable for a minicomputer, and it further seems reasonable to believe that this may be related to the same type of computer referenced in the M4 paper. However, details of the sending party have been redacted, and there is nothing pointing to the identity of the manufacturer.
Sadly, that's all that seems available. I wonder if, perhaps, Doug McIlroy (Cc'ed directly to float this to the top of his stack) can shed more light on the topic?
- Dan C.
From rtomek at ceti.pl Tue Dec 24 09:03:36 2019
From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola)
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 00:03:36 +0100
Subject: [COFF] Gnu Smalltalk or...? [was: Most Popular Programming
Languages 1965 - 2019]
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20191223230336.GB18919@tau1.ceti.pl>
On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 08:36:07AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Dec 2019, Arthur Krewat wrote:
>
> >Define "popular" - what's actually in use, versus what people want
> >to use. And job listings versus research. Both of those would lead
> >to different results ;)
>
> I've been keeping a list of all the languages that I've ever used
> since I was a stripling; it's up to 48, and that's counting all
> assembly languages as one etc. That's about one language for every
> year that I've been a
> programmer :-)
>
> Yes, I try and teach myself a new language whenever possible; I'm
> currently looking at Ruby as a lightweight replacement for Perl (I
> run screaming from Python and its silly indentation), and Perl/Tk
> for a GUI for some scripts that I wrote (mostly puzzle solvers).
This question is not addressed to you only: I am considering Gnu
Smalltalk for such role (Perl & Python replacement). I knew Python 1
and 2 once, but since they made a (what appears to me as) botched[1]
move to Python3 I decided I wanted to try something else. This
includes rewriting few scripts I had made in Python into this newly
choosed language, as I am also moving into new OS installation
(perhaps OpenBSD) and I guess there will be no Python2 when I finally
make the move. Or if there is Python2 now, it is going to go during
one of upgrades which is scheduled (by design) to happen twice a
year or so.
The scripts are nothing hard, stuff like filtering lines of input
etc. Sometimes filtering bytes.
Python is nice as long as one stays inside the "batteries included"
limits, i.e. as long as one makes use of libraries provided as part of
the language. I was rather happy with those standard libraries.
As of Perl, I have to relearn it every time I make attempt to use it
and it just cannot stick.
AWK does not have things like built-in stat function and checking exit
status of command in child sh process seems to be a bit cumbersome. I
wrote few simple scripts with it after I finally learned I should not
write those in Perl. But it is far from perfect for overall scripting.
I am yet to teach myself GSmalltalk, but after skimming the
docs it seems to have the right classes for such scripting which I
would like to do - UNIX/Posix type of environment, text files, maybe
some bin<->uuencode mingling. This kind of things could be also done
in sh, but I deteste starting thousands of processes just to grep
stuff in files and then do something to thousand(s) of matched files
(or process a mailbox of 10000 messages and do something to 40% of
them). I guess it could be a bit faster to do it all inside one process
(and a bit less stressing for sys accounting database). Some of those
use cases might be nicely addressed with AWK, but some of them would
be better written in Perl (which cannot stick in my head) or Python
(which I would rather not use too much).
Another nice choice for me is some Scheme dialect with extensions for
systems programming - Chicken and Gauche seem to fit (but I have to
read the manual). Surprisingly, Elisp is quite well equipped with
plethora of nice functions (calling external command, finding files in
dir etc) but the need to parse output in buffers and inability to read
files in chunks disqualifies Emacs as (standalone) scripting engine. I
consider using Common Lisp (no need to learn it, so one problem off my
head), but I would not say it is perfect for scripting. Albeit some
scripts I wrote in it (sbcl) and I liked the experience.
As I am changing my default scripting language and OS, I would like to
kill one more bird. I would like to be able to compile it from sources
on a system which had been just installed from CD. In case of *BSD, it
means I choose a pack/set with sources and compiler (dev tools), the
installer unpacks it onto empty disk, there is no net connection. Then
I put a pendrive with my stuff, unpack a source code of said scripting
interpreter, call make; make install and only after this I go online
(or not).
So in this last case, if, for example, I chose sbcl, I would have to:
1. install base system
2. compile+install clisp (should compile with "any C")
3. compile+install sbcl (it wants a CL already installed to compile from
source)
A bit strange, but should be doable. I did 2+3 on my current system
more than once.
I am yet to try to compile GSmalltalk from sources and see how it goes.
So the language should be compilable with as little external
dependecies as possible, and with just the tools which either can be
found on bare install, or can be recompiled from USB with my sources -
the sources need not be the newest and glamourest ones, just usable
for my purposes. I can easily make a sh script to automate such
"compilation chain", and it can take an hour or a week, no problem.
I would appreciate any words of wisdom from those who went
this/similar path and could comment or hint a different choice.
[1] Overally, maybe my sentiment against Python as such grew over a
decade and it was not really related to the 2->3 transition. Maybe
rewriting some parts of the code is not that big deal really, but I
feel aversion to rewriting which is not linked to introducing new
features or bugs.
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Tue Dec 24 09:15:30 2019
From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen)
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 00:15:30 +0100
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <38aeb1a1-6a03-54d7-3cfb-62b281b5e60b@kilonet.net>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<7217cd90-a42a-68b2-dff1-4f90a1bf6063@kilonet.net>
<2faaeddb7acece00e4a7da6dd71b566c@firemail.de>
<38aeb1a1-6a03-54d7-3cfb-62b281b5e60b@kilonet.net>
Message-ID: <f1aed23422482c6b05ce6edcc6c64bc2@firemail.de>
On 12/23/2019 2:54 PM, Thomas Paulsen wrote:
>> you are right. However take into consideration that py is very popular
in Linux and certainly Freebsd too.
>
> So is Taylor Swift ;)
OK, then py is the Taylor Swift of the programming languages. ;-)
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From cym224 at gmail.com Tue Dec 24 09:27:48 2019
From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam)
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2019 18:27:48 -0500
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
Message-ID: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
A recent thread makes me wonder which languages would people like to
learn? (I confess to trying, as Dave does, but time prevents anything
more that learing syntax and writing toy programmes. One must write
something substantial -- not synonomous with large -- to really learn a
language.)
Erlang, Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell, and Scheme come to mind...
N.
From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Tue Dec 24 19:54:38 2019
From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen)
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 10:54:38 +0100
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <401c8f87ae44fe8666e35358114df4fd@firemail.de>
> [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
golang.
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From toby at telegraphics.com.au Wed Dec 25 02:28:12 2019
From: toby at telegraphics.com.au (Toby Thain)
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 11:28:12 -0500
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <129b28e1-5629-2742-bb04-dfe6161ea3f0@telegraphics.com.au>
On 2019-12-23 6:27 p.m., Nemo Nusquam wrote:
> A recent thread makes me wonder which languages would people like to
> learn? (I confess to trying, as Dave does, but time prevents anything
> more that learing syntax and writing toy programmes. One must write
> something substantial -- not synonomous with large -- to really learn a
> language.)
>
> Erlang, Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell, and Scheme come to mind...
You have GREAT taste, and that covers the major paradigms.
The late Joe Armstrong had a very similar list!
https://www.quora.com/What-programming-languages-should-all-programmers-know/answer/Toby-Thain
--T
>
> N.
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
From lm at mcvoy.com Wed Dec 25 02:35:51 2019
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 08:35:51 -0800
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <129b28e1-5629-2742-bb04-dfe6161ea3f0@telegraphics.com.au>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<129b28e1-5629-2742-bb04-dfe6161ea3f0@telegraphics.com.au>
Message-ID: <20191224163551.GA3839@mcvoy.com>
On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 11:28:12AM -0500, Toby Thain wrote:
> On 2019-12-23 6:27 p.m., Nemo Nusquam wrote:
> > A recent thread makes me wonder which languages would people like to
> > learn??? (I confess to trying, as Dave does, but time prevents anything
> > more that learing syntax and writing toy programmes.?? One must write
> > something substantial -- not synonomous with large -- to really learn a
> > language.)
> >
> > Erlang, Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell, and Scheme come to mind...
>
> You have GREAT taste, and that covers the major paradigms.
As a systems guy who likes to get all the perf he can out of the machine,
those are not what I'd reach for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. I still like C, it's
what I reach for first. Go might be second.
For scripting I designed http://little-lang.org which looks a lot like
interpreted C with a bunch of neat extensions (ever wanted strings in
your switch() statement? How about regexps?). I
The listed languages are what a very small set of programmers passionately
love but they never go anywhere because the rank and file programmers don't
get it. I can think of lots of examples where some smart dude pushed
lisp in a company and it either never went anywhere or it died when the
dude left.
There is a lot to be said for programming in the most simple way possible,
we had a saying at my company "Write code so it is the most readable.
Because 6 months from now you'll not remember it, it will be like reading
someone else's code".
Code is write once, read many. Optimize for that.
From bakul at bitblocks.com Wed Dec 25 03:46:18 2019
From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah)
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 09:46:18 -0800
Subject: [COFF] Gnu Smalltalk or...? [was: Most Popular Programming
Languages 1965 - 2019]
In-Reply-To: <20191223230336.GB18919@tau1.ceti.pl>
References: <20191223230336.GB18919@tau1.ceti.pl>
Message-ID: <6FB1192D-C301-42EF-9EAA-2F839B7777E3@bitblocks.com>
My scheme of choice is Gambit Scheme. Gambit is quite portable &
fast. You can always compile to a binary if performance is an issue.
There is now Gerbil Scheme, that sits on top of Gambit and is geared
toward systems programming. It seems to provide a lot of additional
features, using Scheme’s extensibility but I haven’t used it yet.
https://cons.io/tutorials/ <https://cons.io/tutorials/>
I find scheme code clear and concise (but not as concise as array
languages such as k, my other language of choice, where I have to
relearn the code every time but then it is only a handful of lines.).
These days python has become quite the glue language, used for all
sorts of things, from AI to GPIO fiddling. Not my favorite language
but a working knowledge in it has been useful.
I would have loved to use SmallTalk 30+ years ago. Now not so much.
> On Dec 23, 2019, at 3:13 PM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 08:36:07AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>>> On Sun, 22 Dec 2019, Arthur Krewat wrote:
>>>
>>> Define "popular" - what's actually in use, versus what people want
>>> to use. And job listings versus research. Both of those would lead
>>> to different results ;)
>>
>> I've been keeping a list of all the languages that I've ever used
>> since I was a stripling; it's up to 48, and that's counting all
>> assembly languages as one etc. That's about one language for every
>> year that I've been a
>> programmer :-)
>>
>> Yes, I try and teach myself a new language whenever possible; I'm
>> currently looking at Ruby as a lightweight replacement for Perl (I
>> run screaming from Python and its silly indentation), and Perl/Tk
>> for a GUI for some scripts that I wrote (mostly puzzle solvers).
>
> This question is not addressed to you only: I am considering Gnu
> Smalltalk for such role (Perl & Python replacement). I knew Python 1
> and 2 once, but since they made a (what appears to me as) botched[1]
> move to Python3 I decided I wanted to try something else. This
> includes rewriting few scripts I had made in Python into this newly
> choosed language, as I am also moving into new OS installation
> (perhaps OpenBSD) and I guess there will be no Python2 when I finally
> make the move. Or if there is Python2 now, it is going to go during
> one of upgrades which is scheduled (by design) to happen twice a
> year or so.
>
> The scripts are nothing hard, stuff like filtering lines of input
> etc. Sometimes filtering bytes.
>
> Python is nice as long as one stays inside the "batteries included"
> limits, i.e. as long as one makes use of libraries provided as part of
> the language. I was rather happy with those standard libraries.
>
> As of Perl, I have to relearn it every time I make attempt to use it
> and it just cannot stick.
>
> AWK does not have things like built-in stat function and checking exit
> status of command in child sh process seems to be a bit cumbersome. I
> wrote few simple scripts with it after I finally learned I should not
> write those in Perl. But it is far from perfect for overall scripting.
>
> I am yet to teach myself GSmalltalk, but after skimming the
> docs it seems to have the right classes for such scripting which I
> would like to do - UNIX/Posix type of environment, text files, maybe
> some bin<->uuencode mingling. This kind of things could be also done
> in sh, but I deteste starting thousands of processes just to grep
> stuff in files and then do something to thousand(s) of matched files
> (or process a mailbox of 10000 messages and do something to 40% of
> them). I guess it could be a bit faster to do it all inside one process
> (and a bit less stressing for sys accounting database). Some of those
> use cases might be nicely addressed with AWK, but some of them would
> be better written in Perl (which cannot stick in my head) or Python
> (which I would rather not use too much).
>
> Another nice choice for me is some Scheme dialect with extensions for
> systems programming - Chicken and Gauche seem to fit (but I have to
> read the manual). Surprisingly, Elisp is quite well equipped with
> plethora of nice functions (calling external command, finding files in
> dir etc) but the need to parse output in buffers and inability to read
> files in chunks disqualifies Emacs as (standalone) scripting engine. I
> consider using Common Lisp (no need to learn it, so one problem off my
> head), but I would not say it is perfect for scripting. Albeit some
> scripts I wrote in it (sbcl) and I liked the experience.
>
> As I am changing my default scripting language and OS, I would like to
> kill one more bird. I would like to be able to compile it from sources
> on a system which had been just installed from CD. In case of *BSD, it
> means I choose a pack/set with sources and compiler (dev tools), the
> installer unpacks it onto empty disk, there is no net connection. Then
> I put a pendrive with my stuff, unpack a source code of said scripting
> interpreter, call make; make install and only after this I go online
> (or not).
>
> So in this last case, if, for example, I chose sbcl, I would have to:
>
> 1. install base system
> 2. compile+install clisp (should compile with "any C")
> 3. compile+install sbcl (it wants a CL already installed to compile from
> source)
>
> A bit strange, but should be doable. I did 2+3 on my current system
> more than once.
>
> I am yet to try to compile GSmalltalk from sources and see how it goes.
>
> So the language should be compilable with as little external
> dependecies as possible, and with just the tools which either can be
> found on bare install, or can be recompiled from USB with my sources -
> the sources need not be the newest and glamourest ones, just usable
> for my purposes. I can easily make a sh script to automate such
> "compilation chain", and it can take an hour or a week, no problem.
>
> I would appreciate any words of wisdom from those who went
> this/similar path and could comment or hint a different choice.
>
> [1] Overally, maybe my sentiment against Python as such grew over a
> decade and it was not really related to the 2->3 transition. Maybe
> rewriting some parts of the code is not that big deal really, but I
> feel aversion to rewriting which is not linked to introducing new
> features or bugs.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Tomasz Rola
>
> --
> ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
> ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
> ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
> ** **
> ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
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From michael at kjorling.se Wed Dec 25 03:50:35 2019
From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=)
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 17:50:35 +0000
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <20191224163551.GA3839@mcvoy.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<129b28e1-5629-2742-bb04-dfe6161ea3f0@telegraphics.com.au>
<20191224163551.GA3839@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <trrkqwt9kjzbmrgzctxrvjqz@localhost>
On 24 Dec 2019 08:35 -0800, from lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy):
> There is a lot to be said for programming in the most simple way possible,
> we had a saying at my company "Write code so it is the most readable.
> Because 6 months from now you'll not remember it, it will be like reading
> someone else's code".
>
> Code is write once, read many. Optimize for that.
That's also why I dislike it when people remove things like explicit
null checks and the likes, only because technically the value is
guaranteed to be not-null at that point (either based on the type, or
the code leading up to that point). Unless it's obvious that something
won't be null, then let the compiler optimize that out if it can be
safely optimized out, I say; there's value to being explicit in
non-obvious cases, in part because over the lifetime of the code base,
as you say, you are going to spend more time _anyway_ reading that
code than you spent writing that one line or that one expression.
Same reason why I'll sometimes add "unnecessary" parenthesis to
expressions. If you parse the expression and know all precedence rules
by heart (sometimes including the more esoteric ones; quick now,
imagining you don't do a lot of bit-banging, does `^` have precedence
over `&`? the existence of the joke "goes to" `-->` operator is just
icing on the cake here), those can technically be unnecessary; but
having them often adds _clarity_ that helps convey intent (yes, I
really meant to do this) and meaning (this is how to parse the
expression), at the cost of a totally insignificant increase in build
times. To me, that's an appropriate trade-off.
That said, I'd rather read code that makes good use of language
features such as, say, the conditional operator (`?:` in C-derived
languages), than code that does the same thing using a bunch of
if/else constructs and temporary variables, just because someone might
not know what `x?y:z` in the middle of a statement means. That latter
is something that can be solved by a five-minute explanation when they
encounter it, instead of burdening everyone who reads the code with
extra crud just in the event that someone doesn't know about the
conditional operator. Now, that might not be (hopefully was not) what
you meant, but to me, "write readable code" should not be taken to
mean "write code that does not require knowledge of the programming
language to read", as sometimes happens at the other extreme end of
the scale.
--
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?â€
From lm at mcvoy.com Wed Dec 25 04:04:20 2019
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 10:04:20 -0800
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <trrkqwt9kjzbmrgzctxrvjqz@localhost>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<129b28e1-5629-2742-bb04-dfe6161ea3f0@telegraphics.com.au>
<20191224163551.GA3839@mcvoy.com>
<trrkqwt9kjzbmrgzctxrvjqz@localhost>
Message-ID: <20191224180420.GC3839@mcvoy.com>
On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 05:50:35PM +0000, Michael Kj??rling wrote:
> On 24 Dec 2019 08:35 -0800, from lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy):
> > There is a lot to be said for programming in the most simple way possible,
> > we had a saying at my company "Write code so it is the most readable.
> > Because 6 months from now you'll not remember it, it will be like reading
> > someone else's code".
> >
> > Code is write once, read many. Optimize for that.
>
> Same reason why I'll sometimes add "unnecessary" parenthesis to
> expressions. If you parse the expression and know all precedence rules
> by heart (sometimes including the more esoteric ones; quick now,
> imagining you don't do a lot of bit-banging, does `^` have precedence
> over `&`? the existence of the joke "goes to" `-->` operator is just
> icing on the cake here), those can technically be unnecessary; but
> having them often adds _clarity_ that helps convey intent (yes, I
> really meant to do this) and meaning (this is how to parse the
> expression), at the cost of a totally insignificant increase in build
> times. To me, that's an appropriate trade-off.
We could work together, I do exactly the same thing.
> That said, I'd rather read code that makes good use of language
> features such as, say, the conditional operator (`?:` in C-derived
> languages), than code that does the same thing using a bunch of
> if/else constructs and temporary variables, just because someone might
> not know what `x?y:z` in the middle of a statement means. That latter
> is something that can be solved by a five-minute explanation when they
> encounter it, instead of burdening everyone who reads the code with
> extra crud just in the event that someone doesn't know about the
> conditional operator. Now, that might not be (hopefully was not) what
> you meant, but to me, "write readable code" should not be taken to
> mean "write code that does not require knowledge of the programming
> language to read", as sometimes happens at the other extreme end of
> the scale.
Again, 100% agree.
From dave at horsfall.org Wed Dec 25 06:27:28 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 07:27:28 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912250725100.89651@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Mon, 23 Dec 2019, Nemo Nusquam wrote:
> A recent thread makes me wonder which languages would people like to
> learn? (I confess to trying, as Dave does, but time prevents anything
> more that learing syntax and writing toy programmes. One must write
> something substantial -- not synonomous with large -- to really learn a
> language.)
Well, being retired I'm no longer compelled to write programs; I just do
it as a hobby, like people collect stamps :-)
> Erlang, Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell, and Scheme come to mind...
I might get around to them...
-- Dave
From dave at horsfall.org Wed Dec 25 13:34:17 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 14:34:17 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <20191224163551.GA3839@mcvoy.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<129b28e1-5629-2742-bb04-dfe6161ea3f0@telegraphics.com.au>
<20191224163551.GA3839@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912251431430.89651@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Tue, 24 Dec 2019, Larry McVoy wrote:
> There is a lot to be said for programming in the most simple way
> possible, we had a saying at my company "Write code so it is the most
> readable. Because 6 months from now you'll not remember it, it will be
> like reading someone else's code".
That's also my personal mantra when writing my own code, because six
months from now I won't have a clue what was going through my head...
-- Dave
From cym224 at gmail.com Thu Dec 26 02:02:34 2019
From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo)
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 11:02:34 -0500
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <20191224163551.GA3839@mcvoy.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<129b28e1-5629-2742-bb04-dfe6161ea3f0@telegraphics.com.au>
<20191224163551.GA3839@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <CAJfiPzx7ohw67SqvmjOxTbs4wu4n2nzhYJ-W9TjtFH0xsQRitQ@mail.gmail.com>
On 24/12/2019, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 11:28:12AM -0500, Toby Thain wrote:
>> On 2019-12-23 6:27 p.m., Nemo Nusquam wrote:
>> > A recent thread makes me wonder which languages would people like to
>> > learn??? (I confess to trying, as Dave does, but time prevents anything
>> > more that learing syntax and writing toy programmes.?? One must write
>> > something substantial -- not synonomous with large -- to really learn a
>> > language.)
>> >
>> > Erlang, Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell, and Scheme come to mind...
>>
>> You have GREAT taste, and that covers the major paradigms.
>
> As a systems guy who likes to get all the perf he can out of the machine,
> those are not what I'd reach for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. I still like C, it's
> what I reach for first. Go might be second.
As usual, Larry, YMMV. Erlang/OTP is heavily used in telecoms back-end.
N.
From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Thu Dec 26 03:05:55 2019
From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen)
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 18:05:55 +0100
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <20191224163551.GA3839@mcvoy.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<129b28e1-5629-2742-bb04-dfe6161ea3f0@telegraphics.com.au>
<20191224163551.GA3839@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <fef9789d55923e23012954aa7b95302b@firemail.de>
>As a systems guy who likes to get all the perf he can out of the machine,
>those are not what I'd reach for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. I still like C, it's
>what I reach for first. Go might be second.
that describes exactly my preferences, however beside the perf issue, I like to be as close as possible to the machine and the system calls.
From rtomek at ceti.pl Thu Dec 26 03:31:01 2019
From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola)
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 18:31:01 +0100
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 06:27:48PM -0500, Nemo Nusquam wrote:
> A recent thread makes me wonder which languages would people like to
> learn? (I confess to trying, as Dave does, but time prevents
> anything more that learing syntax and writing toy programmes. One
> must write something substantial -- not synonomous with large -- to
> really learn a language.)
>
> Erlang, Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell, and Scheme come to mind...
I will swim upstream and say: if I had more free time, I would
probably want to finish reading "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho,
Kernighan snd Weinberger. The language is quite limited (as I have
written in another email of mine) but I think it is grossly
underappreciated and quite a few things can be squeezed out from it.
After that, I could find myself some decent Forth introduction and
finish reading that one, too.
But if you have not had experience with Scheme yet, try it out. LISPs
in general are worth learning, IMHO. And much more practical than what
a popular opinion says.
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
From rtomek at ceti.pl Thu Dec 26 03:50:56 2019
From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola)
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 18:50:56 +0100
Subject: [COFF] Gnu Smalltalk or...? [was: Most Popular Programming
Languages 1965 - 2019]
In-Reply-To: <6FB1192D-C301-42EF-9EAA-2F839B7777E3@bitblocks.com>
References: <20191223230336.GB18919@tau1.ceti.pl>
<6FB1192D-C301-42EF-9EAA-2F839B7777E3@bitblocks.com>
Message-ID: <20191225175056.GB13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 09:46:18AM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote:
> My scheme of choice is Gambit Scheme. Gambit is quite portable &
> fast. You can always compile to a binary if performance is an issue.
> There is now Gerbil Scheme, that sits on top of Gambit and is geared
> toward systems programming. It seems to provide a lot of additional
> features, using Scheme’s extensibility but I haven’t used it yet.
> https://cons.io/tutorials/ <https://cons.io/tutorials/>
Thanks. As it sometimes happens, I have Gambit on my system, among few
other Schemes. It just did not look attractive when I looked at
it. But I have unpacked the newest version and guess what, two years
later it looks better... I will have to write some small code snippets
to see how it behaves (slurping and sorting twenty million lines of
txt, something like this).
> I find scheme code clear and concise (but not as concise as array
> languages such as k, my other language of choice, where I have to
> relearn the code every time but then it is only a handful of lines.).
I think I will postpone learning APL and its cousins for a while. They
certainly had an edge when one could stuff complete solution on few
punched cards. This had to impress the by-lookers like hell, when
everybody had to tuck a box or few full of cards with them. On the
other hand, maybe I will have a look at k, who knows.
> These days python has become quite the glue language, used for all
> sorts of things, from AI to GPIO fiddling. Not my favorite language
> but a working knowledge in it has been useful.
Exactly my opinion too. I would say it makes for a nice sandbox
language where playing with stuff already inside is nice experience,
but doing new stuff, not so much.
> I would have loved to use SmallTalk 30+ years ago. Now not so much.
Ah. Maybe I should just stick with Gambit and relegate Smalltalk for a
low priority hobby/edu project.
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
From athornton at gmail.com Thu Dec 26 05:13:07 2019
From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 12:13:07 -0700
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
Message-ID: <CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
Maybe this will be the year I finally learn Rust. Like Larry if I am
feeling like using a compiled language, I reach for Go or C (probably in
that order these days), and my day job is mostly Python, which once you get
over the syntactic whitespace, really is pretty much just executable
pseudocode, which turns out to be rather nice.
FORTH is fun and everyone should learn enough of it to get the feel of a
stack-based language. You can have most of the fun with a proper HP
calculator (I never owned a better calculator than the 28S). Not sure how
relevant FORTH is anymore, but it makes a nice palate-cleanser. Of course
if you turn the stack on its side you have a list, and writing in LISP
dialects is also fun.
This also may be the year I dust off and get good at IBM 370 assembler.
I've got a vanilla VM/370r6 and one with the SixPack and DIAG58 and all the
bells and whistles (including a screen editor not a million miles from good
old XEDIT) running under Hercules. So it seems like taking a crack at
getting v7 for the 370 going is something I really should do. And I talked
to someone--don't remember who without searching my email archives--about
bootstrapping from v7 to whatever the latest Research Unix we can find is.
That'd be cool too.
Adam
On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 10:31 AM Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 06:27:48PM -0500, Nemo Nusquam wrote:
> > A recent thread makes me wonder which languages would people like to
> > learn? (I confess to trying, as Dave does, but time prevents
> > anything more that learing syntax and writing toy programmes. One
> > must write something substantial -- not synonomous with large -- to
> > really learn a language.)
> >
> > Erlang, Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell, and Scheme come to mind...
>
> I will swim upstream and say: if I had more free time, I would
> probably want to finish reading "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho,
> Kernighan snd Weinberger. The language is quite limited (as I have
> written in another email of mine) but I think it is grossly
> underappreciated and quite a few things can be squeezed out from it.
>
> After that, I could find myself some decent Forth introduction and
> finish reading that one, too.
>
> But if you have not had experience with Scheme yet, try it out. LISPs
> in general are worth learning, IMHO. And much more practical than what
> a popular opinion says.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Tomasz Rola
>
> --
> ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
> ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
> ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
> ** **
> ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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From me at ryan.cm Thu Dec 26 10:23:21 2019
From: me at ryan.cm (Ryan Merrill)
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 19:23:21 -0500
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
I’m surprised Racket hasn’t come up on this thread yet. It was the first
LISP I learned and was incredibly rewarding for my day job as a developer.
I only touched its surface, but would love the opportunity to dive deeper
into some of its abilities to create domain specific languages for
specialized tasks.
On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 2:13 PM Adam Thornton <athornton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe this will be the year I finally learn Rust. Like Larry if I am
> feeling like using a compiled language, I reach for Go or C (probably in
> that order these days), and my day job is mostly Python, which once you get
> over the syntactic whitespace, really is pretty much just executable
> pseudocode, which turns out to be rather nice.
>
> FORTH is fun and everyone should learn enough of it to get the feel of a
> stack-based language. You can have most of the fun with a proper HP
> calculator (I never owned a better calculator than the 28S). Not sure how
> relevant FORTH is anymore, but it makes a nice palate-cleanser. Of course
> if you turn the stack on its side you have a list, and writing in LISP
> dialects is also fun.
>
> This also may be the year I dust off and get good at IBM 370 assembler.
> I've got a vanilla VM/370r6 and one with the SixPack and DIAG58 and all the
> bells and whistles (including a screen editor not a million miles from good
> old XEDIT) running under Hercules. So it seems like taking a crack at
> getting v7 for the 370 going is something I really should do. And I talked
> to someone--don't remember who without searching my email archives--about
> bootstrapping from v7 to whatever the latest Research Unix we can find is.
> That'd be cool too.
>
>
> Adam
>
> On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 10:31 AM Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 06:27:48PM -0500, Nemo Nusquam wrote:
>> > A recent thread makes me wonder which languages would people like to
>> > learn? (I confess to trying, as Dave does, but time prevents
>> > anything more that learing syntax and writing toy programmes. One
>> > must write something substantial -- not synonomous with large -- to
>> > really learn a language.)
>> >
>> > Erlang, Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell, and Scheme come to mind...
>>
>> I will swim upstream and say: if I had more free time, I would
>> probably want to finish reading "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho,
>> Kernighan snd Weinberger. The language is quite limited (as I have
>> written in another email of mine) but I think it is grossly
>> underappreciated and quite a few things can be squeezed out from it.
>>
>> After that, I could find myself some decent Forth introduction and
>> finish reading that one, too.
>>
>> But if you have not had experience with Scheme yet, try it out. LISPs
>> in general are worth learning, IMHO. And much more practical than what
>> a popular opinion says.
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Tomasz Rola
>>
>> --
>> ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
>> ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
>> ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
>> ** **
>> ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
>> _______________________________________________
>> COFF mailing list
>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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From wobblygong at gmail.com Thu Dec 26 11:54:03 2019
From: wobblygong at gmail.com (Wesley Parish)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 14:54:03 +1300
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
I'm thinking of finally learning C++. Go and Rust sound like a good
challenge, except when you put the two names together and it sounds like
a command (Like that famous royal couple, Chuck and Die. Not the name
for a restaurant, let alone a fast food joint.). And some day I intend
learning Lisp and Scheme, but I've never made the time for it yet.
I've learnt Pascal and C and SQL and Java and (believe it or not) CNC
part programming, had some introduction to Lisp and Modula2 and Oberon.
I've even looked at Ada. Depending on the usability of DOSemu and
FreeDOS, I might have another go at getting my head around Intel's i86
assembler, but I think the time might be better spent learn g/as.
Wesley Parish
On 26/12/19 1:23 pm, Ryan Merrill wrote:
> I’m surprised Racket hasn’t come up on this thread yet. It was the
> first LISP I learned and was incredibly rewarding for my day job as a
> developer. I only touched its surface, but would love the opportunity
> to dive deeper into some of its abilities to create domain specific
> languages for specialized tasks.
>
> On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 2:13 PM Adam Thornton <athornton at gmail.com
> <mailto:athornton at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Maybe this will be the year I finally learn Rust. Like Larry if I
> am feeling like using a compiled language, I reach for Go or C
> (probably in that order these days), and my day job is mostly
> Python, which once you get over the syntactic whitespace, really
> is pretty much just executable pseudocode, which turns out to be
> rather nice.
>
> FORTH is fun and everyone should learn enough of it to get the
> feel of a stack-based language. You can have most of the fun with
> a proper HP calculator (I never owned a better calculator than the
> 28S). Not sure how relevant FORTH is anymore, but it makes a nice
> palate-cleanser. Of course if you turn the stack on its side you
> have a list, and writing in LISP dialects is also fun.
>
> This also may be the year I dust off and get good at IBM 370
> assembler. I've got a vanilla VM/370r6 and one with the SixPack
> and DIAG58 and all the bells and whistles (including a screen
> editor not a million miles from good old XEDIT) running under
> Hercules. So it seems like taking a crack at getting v7 for the
> 370 going is something I really should do. And I talked to
> someone--don't remember who without searching my email
> archives--about bootstrapping from v7 to whatever the latest
> Research Unix we can find is. That'd be cool too.
>
>
> Adam
>
> On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 10:31 AM Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl
> <mailto:rtomek at ceti.pl>> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 06:27:48PM -0500, Nemo Nusquam wrote:
> > A recent thread makes me wonder which languages would people
> like to
> > learn? (I confess to trying, as Dave does, but time prevents
> > anything more that learing syntax and writing toy
> programmes. One
> > must write something substantial -- not synonomous with
> large -- to
> > really learn a language.)
> >
> > Erlang, Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell, and Scheme come to mind...
>
> I will swim upstream and say: if I had more free time, I would
> probably want to finish reading "The AWK Programming Language"
> by Aho,
> Kernighan snd Weinberger. The language is quite limited (as I have
> written in another email of mine) but I think it is grossly
> underappreciated and quite a few things can be squeezed out
> from it.
>
> After that, I could find myself some decent Forth introduction and
> finish reading that one, too.
>
> But if you have not had experience with Scheme yet, try it
> out. LISPs
> in general are worth learning, IMHO. And much more practical
> than what
> a popular opinion says.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Tomasz Rola
>
> --
> ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.Â
> Â Â **
> ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's
> home  **
> ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...Â
> Â Â **
> ** Â Â Â Â Â Â **
> ** Tomasz Rola     mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com
> <mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com> Â Â Â Â Â **
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org <mailto:COFF at minnie.tuhs.org>
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org <mailto:COFF at minnie.tuhs.org>
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
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From dave at horsfall.org Thu Dec 26 13:44:06 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 14:44:06 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
<44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912261438290.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Thu, 26 Dec 2019, Wesley Parish wrote:
> I'm thinking of finally learning C++. [...]
C++? That way lies madness :-) I had to teach myself it once (with the
aid of The Book) and was glad to leave it behind. Oh, it was also the
first OO lang that I'd ever used, which probably didn't help.
I can still read it, bot no way will I go back to writing in it...
To be fair, though, I understand it's matured a bit since the original;
the only way to debug it was to go back to the fugly C that it generated,
and figure out what you wrote in C++...
-- Dave
From lm at mcvoy.com Thu Dec 26 14:00:24 2019
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 20:00:24 -0800
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912261438290.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
<44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912261438290.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20191226040024.GH3839@mcvoy.com>
On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 02:44:06PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Dec 2019, Wesley Parish wrote:
>
> >I'm thinking of finally learning C++. [...]
>
> C++? That way lies madness :-) I had to teach myself it once (with the aid
> of The Book) and was glad to leave it behind. Oh, it was also the
> first OO lang that I'd ever used, which probably didn't help.
>
> I can still read it, bot no way will I go back to writing in it...
Amen, brother. Bell Labs did some great things, a lot of great things,
but C++ is not one of them.
I read the book and wanted to like it, I liked how constructors/destructors
stacked, that seemed elegant to me. I wanted that for all the methods and
soon found out only allocation/deallocation stacked. That seemed lame.
C++ seems to encourage complexity and I hate complexity. I tolerate
it when there is no other way, but as my math kids say, if you have the
right answer, it is beautiful and simple. Complex is reserved for when
you haven't figured it out yet. That's not totally fair, I've written
some complex code but I did have the nagging feeling there must be a
simpler way.
C++ teams are riddled with rules "don't use this, don't use that". It's
an interesting language to look at but I'll choose C over C++ every time.
You can fake OO in C, Sun did it with vnodes and it worked just fine. I'd
rather fake it and have it be simple than have C++ and have it be weird.
That might be me just being an old fart but I have yet to have someone
I admire tell me I need to use C++.
From wobblygong at gmail.com Thu Dec 26 15:43:17 2019
From: wobblygong at gmail.com (Wesley Parish)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 18:43:17 +1300
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <20191226040024.GH3839@mcvoy.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
<44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912261438290.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191226040024.GH3839@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <CACNPpeYjchtOF_caAwui2AhAdguHHYJepVVmG4DFnF+wx-Nk4A@mail.gmail.com>
I will admit the modern version reads a lot more cleanly than the
older versions. They finally got rid of the pretense that a C++ header
file was the same sort of thing as a C header file.
I tried to learn it back in the nineties with one of the Sams Teach
Yourself books and Borland's Turbo C++ compiler (before I switched to
Linux), but at the end I was still as mystified as before. It took
immersion into Java before I finally got the hang of object
orientation, and Java's still a lot smaller than C++.
A friend wants me to write some utilities for a C++ project he's got,
so I figure I may as well help him out. Otherwise I'd be just as happy
without C++. I'll try to keep the complexity down to the limit
suggested by the Unix philosophy - a piece of code that does only one
thing and does it well. :)
Wesley Parish
On 12/26/19, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 02:44:06PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>> On Thu, 26 Dec 2019, Wesley Parish wrote:
>>
>> >I'm thinking of finally learning C++. [...]
>>
>> C++? That way lies madness :-) I had to teach myself it once (with the
>> aid
>> of The Book) and was glad to leave it behind. Oh, it was also the
>> first OO lang that I'd ever used, which probably didn't help.
>>
>> I can still read it, bot no way will I go back to writing in it...
>
> Amen, brother. Bell Labs did some great things, a lot of great things,
> but C++ is not one of them.
>
> I read the book and wanted to like it, I liked how constructors/destructors
> stacked, that seemed elegant to me. I wanted that for all the methods and
> soon found out only allocation/deallocation stacked. That seemed lame.
>
> C++ seems to encourage complexity and I hate complexity. I tolerate
> it when there is no other way, but as my math kids say, if you have the
> right answer, it is beautiful and simple. Complex is reserved for when
> you haven't figured it out yet. That's not totally fair, I've written
> some complex code but I did have the nagging feeling there must be a
> simpler way.
>
> C++ teams are riddled with rules "don't use this, don't use that". It's
> an interesting language to look at but I'll choose C over C++ every time.
> You can fake OO in C, Sun did it with vnodes and it worked just fine. I'd
> rather fake it and have it be simple than have C++ and have it be weird.
>
> That might be me just being an old fart but I have yet to have someone
> I admire tell me I need to use C++.
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
From tih at hamartun.priv.no Thu Dec 26 21:49:20 2019
From: tih at hamartun.priv.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 12:49:20 +0100
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <CACNPpeYjchtOF_caAwui2AhAdguHHYJepVVmG4DFnF+wx-Nk4A@mail.gmail.com>
(Wesley Parish's message of "Thu, 26 Dec 2019 18:43:17 +1300")
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
<44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912261438290.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191226040024.GH3839@mcvoy.com>
<CACNPpeYjchtOF_caAwui2AhAdguHHYJepVVmG4DFnF+wx-Nk4A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <m236d7xq67.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Wesley Parish <wobblygong at gmail.com> wrote:
> It took immersion into Java before I finally got the hang of object
> orientation, and Java's still a lot smaller than C++.
This quote may be relevant to that:
"I made up the term 'object-oriented', and I can tell you I didn't
have C++ in mind!" --Alan Kay to Bjarne Stroustrup at OOPSLA 1997.
...and here's GLS, answering critical comments about Java:
"We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the
C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to
Lisp. Aren't you happy?" --Guy L. Steele on the creation of Java
Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> C++ seems to encourage complexity and I hate complexity.
This reminds me of something Erik Naggum said (about another language,
and in harsher words (as was his wont), but the underlying point about
the language affecting how problems are solved is the same):
"It's not that perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards
idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done."
-tih
--
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay
From lm at mcvoy.com Fri Dec 27 01:33:08 2019
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 07:33:08 -0800
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <m236d7xq67.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
<44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912261438290.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191226040024.GH3839@mcvoy.com>
<CACNPpeYjchtOF_caAwui2AhAdguHHYJepVVmG4DFnF+wx-Nk4A@mail.gmail.com>
<m236d7xq67.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Message-ID: <20191226153308.GJ3839@mcvoy.com>
On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 12:49:20PM +0100, Tom Ivar Helbekkmo wrote:
> This reminds me of something Erik Naggum said (about another language,
> and in harsher words (as was his wont), but the underlying point about
> the language affecting how problems are solved is the same):
>
> "It's not that perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards
> idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done."
That's true but idiots can write bad code in any language, there is no
way to make up for bad programmers.
In defense of perl, well perl4, I wrote almost an entire source management
system in perl. I rewrote it twice (so 3 attempts), and the last version
was very maintainable perl. I had to be disciplined about it but I got
to a point that I wrote perl that I could debug 6 months later.
If you are talking about perl5/6, yeah, never warmed up to that. Perl4
was a pleasant mix of sed/awk/maybe Cish that I liked a lot.
From dfawcus+lists-coff at employees.org Fri Dec 27 01:43:49 2019
From: dfawcus+lists-coff at employees.org (Derek Fawcus)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 15:43:49 +0000
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
<44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20191226154349.GA14134@clarinet.employees.org>
On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 02:54:03PM +1300, Wesley Parish wrote:
> Depending on the usability of DOSemu and FreeDOS,
I've not used either in a while. These days when I find a need
to run an old DOS based program, I just run up one of the versions
of DOSbox. On the Mac, choosing Boxer.
Despite being intended for running games, they're actually not
too bad for running some of the old development tools.
DF
From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Fri Dec 27 02:34:29 2019
From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 17:34:29 +0100
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <m236d7xq67.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
<44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912261438290.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191226040024.GH3839@mcvoy.com>
<CACNPpeYjchtOF_caAwui2AhAdguHHYJepVVmG4DFnF+wx-Nk4A@mail.gmail.com>
<m236d7xq67.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Message-ID: <201a20078ecef112dee84d85d66fb68c@firemail.de>
Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> C++ seems to encourage complexity and I hate complexity.
... by adding generics plus object orientation to the complexity of C.
However the (Mr. Big) attitude of some C++ developer teams seems to be the real problem, 'forcing' each other to use all the fancy features of the language. Beside that, one can easily write modest OO code having many advantages over C code, like name spaces, classes, containers, strings etc.
From lm at mcvoy.com Fri Dec 27 02:53:40 2019
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 08:53:40 -0800
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <201a20078ecef112dee84d85d66fb68c@firemail.de>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
<44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912261438290.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191226040024.GH3839@mcvoy.com>
<CACNPpeYjchtOF_caAwui2AhAdguHHYJepVVmG4DFnF+wx-Nk4A@mail.gmail.com>
<m236d7xq67.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
<201a20078ecef112dee84d85d66fb68c@firemail.de>
Message-ID: <20191226165340.GL3839@mcvoy.com>
On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 05:34:29PM +0100, Thomas Paulsen wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
> > C++ seems to encourage complexity and I hate complexity.
> ... by adding generics plus object orientation to the complexity of C.
>
> However the (Mr. Big) attitude of some C++ developer teams seems to be
> the real problem, 'forcing' each other to use all the fancy features of
> the language. Beside that, one can easily write modest OO code having
> many advantages over C code, like name spaces, classes, containers,
> strings etc.
What I'd really like is a "C+". Take C, cherry pick stuff that obviously
makes C better, repeat.
It's basically what we did with http://little-lang.org
From bakul at bitblocks.com Fri Dec 27 03:57:56 2019
From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 09:57:56 -0800
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <CACNPpeYjchtOF_caAwui2AhAdguHHYJepVVmG4DFnF+wx-Nk4A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CACNPpeYjchtOF_caAwui2AhAdguHHYJepVVmG4DFnF+wx-Nk4A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <B9ADAD5D-7EB0-4FB1-930D-C76C9C4238D3@bitblocks.com>
You can write “cleaner C++†but you will also need to read, understand & possibly
modify other people’s code. But don’t let the naysayers stop you. You must find
out for yourself! You must speak the native language of the community you want
to be part of. If you deride their local language and proselytize Esperanto, the
natives may not take kindly to you!
> On Dec 25, 2019, at 9:43 PM, Wesley Parish <wobblygong at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I will admit the modern version reads a lot more cleanly than the
> older versions. They finally got rid of the pretense that a C++ header
> file was the same sort of thing as a C header file.
>
> I tried to learn it back in the nineties with one of the Sams Teach
> Yourself books and Borland's Turbo C++ compiler (before I switched to
> Linux), but at the end I was still as mystified as before. It took
> immersion into Java before I finally got the hang of object
> orientation, and Java's still a lot smaller than C++.
>
> A friend wants me to write some utilities for a C++ project he's got,
> so I figure I may as well help him out. Otherwise I'd be just as happy
> without C++. I'll try to keep the complexity down to the limit
> suggested by the Unix philosophy - a piece of code that does only one
> thing and does it well. :)
>
> Wesley Parish
>
>> On 12/26/19, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 02:44:06PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 26 Dec 2019, Wesley Parish wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm thinking of finally learning C++. [...]
>>>
>>> C++? That way lies madness :-) I had to teach myself it once (with the
>>> aid
>>> of The Book) and was glad to leave it behind. Oh, it was also the
>>> first OO lang that I'd ever used, which probably didn't help.
>>>
>>> I can still read it, bot no way will I go back to writing in it...
>>
>> Amen, brother. Bell Labs did some great things, a lot of great things,
>> but C++ is not one of them.
>>
>> I read the book and wanted to like it, I liked how constructors/destructors
>> stacked, that seemed elegant to me. I wanted that for all the methods and
>> soon found out only allocation/deallocation stacked. That seemed lame.
>>
>> C++ seems to encourage complexity and I hate complexity. I tolerate
>> it when there is no other way, but as my math kids say, if you have the
>> right answer, it is beautiful and simple. Complex is reserved for when
>> you haven't figured it out yet. That's not totally fair, I've written
>> some complex code but I did have the nagging feeling there must be a
>> simpler way.
>>
>> C++ teams are riddled with rules "don't use this, don't use that". It's
>> an interesting language to look at but I'll choose C over C++ every time.
>> You can fake OO in C, Sun did it with vnodes and it worked just fine. I'd
>> rather fake it and have it be simple than have C++ and have it be weird.
>>
>> That might be me just being an old fart but I have yet to have someone
>> I admire tell me I need to use C++.
>> _______________________________________________
>> COFF mailing list
>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
From davida at pobox.com Fri Dec 27 07:28:27 2019
From: davida at pobox.com (David Arnold)
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2019 07:28:27 +1000
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <B9ADAD5D-7EB0-4FB1-930D-C76C9C4238D3@bitblocks.com>
References: <B9ADAD5D-7EB0-4FB1-930D-C76C9C4238D3@bitblocks.com>
Message-ID: <9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
C++ is several different languages in one compiler.
You can use it as a stricter C, as a C with some syntactic support of ADTs, as C++98-style OO, or as a C++17 style meta-programming system. And I’ve probably missed a few.
The resulting complexity requires a lot of discipline to use successfully, especially in a large team.
Java competes pretty successfully with the C++98-style OO subset. C11 now competes with the stricter C subset.
The C++17 feature set competes with ... LISP, maybe? It’s a pretty clear winner for some application areas.
d
> On 27 Dec 2019, at 03:58, Bakul Shah <bakul at bitblocks.com> wrote:
>
> You can write “cleaner C++†but you will also need to read, understand & possibly
> modify other people’s code. But don’t let the naysayers stop you. You must find
> out for yourself! You must speak the native language of the community you want
> to be part of. If you deride their local language and proselytize Esperanto, the
> natives may not take kindly to you!
>
>> On Dec 25, 2019, at 9:43 PM, Wesley Parish <wobblygong at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I will admit the modern version reads a lot more cleanly than the
>> older versions. They finally got rid of the pretense that a C++ header
>> file was the same sort of thing as a C header file.
>>
>> I tried to learn it back in the nineties with one of the Sams Teach
>> Yourself books and Borland's Turbo C++ compiler (before I switched to
>> Linux), but at the end I was still as mystified as before. It took
>> immersion into Java before I finally got the hang of object
>> orientation, and Java's still a lot smaller than C++.
>>
>> A friend wants me to write some utilities for a C++ project he's got,
>> so I figure I may as well help him out. Otherwise I'd be just as happy
>> without C++. I'll try to keep the complexity down to the limit
>> suggested by the Unix philosophy - a piece of code that does only one
>> thing and does it well. :)
>>
>> Wesley Parish
>>
>>> On 12/26/19, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 02:44:06PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>>>>>> On Thu, 26 Dec 2019, Wesley Parish wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm thinking of finally learning C++. [...]
>>>>>
>>>>> C++? That way lies madness :-) I had to teach myself it once (with the
>>>>> aid
>>>>> of The Book) and was glad to leave it behind. Oh, it was also the
>>>>> first OO lang that I'd ever used, which probably didn't help.
>>>>>
>>>>> I can still read it, bot no way will I go back to writing in it...
>>>
>>> Amen, brother. Bell Labs did some great things, a lot of great things,
>>> but C++ is not one of them.
>>>
>>> I read the book and wanted to like it, I liked how constructors/destructors
>>> stacked, that seemed elegant to me. I wanted that for all the methods and
>>> soon found out only allocation/deallocation stacked. That seemed lame.
>>>
>>> C++ seems to encourage complexity and I hate complexity. I tolerate
>>> it when there is no other way, but as my math kids say, if you have the
>>> right answer, it is beautiful and simple. Complex is reserved for when
>>> you haven't figured it out yet. That's not totally fair, I've written
>>> some complex code but I did have the nagging feeling there must be a
>>> simpler way.
>>>
>>> C++ teams are riddled with rules "don't use this, don't use that". It's
>>> an interesting language to look at but I'll choose C over C++ every time.
>>> You can fake OO in C, Sun did it with vnodes and it worked just fine. I'd
>>> rather fake it and have it be simple than have C++ and have it be weird.
>>>
>>> That might be me just being an old fart but I have yet to have someone
>>> I admire tell me I need to use C++.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> COFF mailing list
>>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> COFF mailing list
>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
From lm at mcvoy.com Fri Dec 27 07:37:03 2019
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 13:37:03 -0800
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
References: <B9ADAD5D-7EB0-4FB1-930D-C76C9C4238D3@bitblocks.com>
<9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <20191226213703.GN3839@mcvoy.com>
On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 07:28:27AM +1000, David Arnold wrote:
> C++ is several different languages in one compiler.
Bingo, well said. I find kitchen sink languages like that awful.
It's not what you put in, it's what you don't let in.
As you said, it takes a lot of discipline to use the right subset
which makes you wonder why there isn't a language that is the right
subset.
From sauer at technologists.com Fri Dec 27 07:57:06 2019
From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 15:57:06 -0600
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <20191226213703.GN3839@mcvoy.com>
References: <B9ADAD5D-7EB0-4FB1-930D-C76C9C4238D3@bitblocks.com>
<9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
<20191226213703.GN3839@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <96a7d832-d643-2e3f-95a0-00441df01c2e@technologists.com>
On 12/26/2019 3:37 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 07:28:27AM +1000, David Arnold wrote:
>> C++ is several different languages in one compiler.
>
> Bingo, well said. I find kitchen sink languages like that awful.
> It's not what you put in, it's what you don't let in.
>
> As you said, it takes a lot of discipline to use the right subset
> which makes you wonder why there isn't a language that is the right
> subset.
PL.8 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/8) springs to mind. I can't say
that it was the right or wrong subset of PL/I. I do know that I wrote a
major simulation environment in PL/I while avoiding much of PL/I. I
never used PL.8 myself, just learned it enough to write a PL.8 to C
conversion tool that some AIX folks found useful.
Though the Wikipedia page makes PL.8 sound successful, it is hard to
imagine that more than a small minority of folks chose PL.8 over PL/I.
Even assuming PL.8 was the right subset, it would have struggled to
overcome entrenched PL/I.
From michael at kjorling.se Fri Dec 27 08:13:16 2019
From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 22:13:16 +0000
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <20191226213703.GN3839@mcvoy.com>
References: <B9ADAD5D-7EB0-4FB1-930D-C76C9C4238D3@bitblocks.com>
<9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
<20191226213703.GN3839@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <gjzvzgkg9wxbvm3c7s3q39cq@localhost>
On 26 Dec 2019 13:37 -0800, from lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy):
> As you said, it takes a lot of discipline to use the right subset
> which makes you wonder why there isn't a language that is the right
> subset.
Probably because of the old adage "80% of the users would be just
peachy with 20% of the features; trouble is, it's never _the same_
20%". Lots of people tend to forget that second half of that.
That, and design by committee, maybe? I guess C++ is what you end up
with when _everyone_ is trying to get _their_ 20% into the same tool.
At least with Ada it seems they had the sense to know when to stop.
--
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?â€
From imp at bsdimp.com Fri Dec 27 08:16:48 2019
From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 15:16:48 -0700
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
References: <B9ADAD5D-7EB0-4FB1-930D-C76C9C4238D3@bitblocks.com>
<9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <CANCZdfp-8JVaHLiP24p6sLiEmXPDbb0rpqY7i7RGTaLfFzxi3A@mail.gmail.com>
On Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 2:34 PM David Arnold <davida at pobox.com> wrote:
> C++ is several different languages in one compiler.
>
The very definition of train wreck is when too many trains occupy the same
bit of track at the same time....
Warner
You can use it as a stricter C, as a C with some syntactic support of ADTs,
> as C++98-style OO, or as a C++17 style meta-programming system. And I’ve
> probably missed a few.
>
> The resulting complexity requires a lot of discipline to use successfully,
> especially in a large team.
>
> Java competes pretty successfully with the C++98-style OO subset. C11 now
> competes with the stricter C subset.
>
> The C++17 feature set competes with ... LISP, maybe? It’s a pretty clear
> winner for some application areas.
>
>
>
> d
>
> > On 27 Dec 2019, at 03:58, Bakul Shah <bakul at bitblocks.com> wrote:
> >
> > You can write “cleaner C++†but you will also need to read, understand
> & possibly
> > modify other people’s code. But don’t let the naysayers stop you. You
> must find
> > out for yourself! You must speak the native language of the community
> you want
> > to be part of. If you deride their local language and proselytize
> Esperanto, the
> > natives may not take kindly to you!
> >
> >> On Dec 25, 2019, at 9:43 PM, Wesley Parish <wobblygong at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> I will admit the modern version reads a lot more cleanly than the
> >> older versions. They finally got rid of the pretense that a C++ header
> >> file was the same sort of thing as a C header file.
> >>
> >> I tried to learn it back in the nineties with one of the Sams Teach
> >> Yourself books and Borland's Turbo C++ compiler (before I switched to
> >> Linux), but at the end I was still as mystified as before. It took
> >> immersion into Java before I finally got the hang of object
> >> orientation, and Java's still a lot smaller than C++.
> >>
> >> A friend wants me to write some utilities for a C++ project he's got,
> >> so I figure I may as well help him out. Otherwise I'd be just as happy
> >> without C++. I'll try to keep the complexity down to the limit
> >> suggested by the Unix philosophy - a piece of code that does only one
> >> thing and does it well. :)
> >>
> >> Wesley Parish
> >>
> >>> On 12/26/19, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> >>>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 02:44:06PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> >>>>>> On Thu, 26 Dec 2019, Wesley Parish wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> I'm thinking of finally learning C++. [...]
> >>>>>
> >>>>> C++? That way lies madness :-) I had to teach myself it once (with
> the
> >>>>> aid
> >>>>> of The Book) and was glad to leave it behind. Oh, it was also the
> >>>>> first OO lang that I'd ever used, which probably didn't help.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I can still read it, bot no way will I go back to writing in it...
> >>>
> >>> Amen, brother. Bell Labs did some great things, a lot of great things,
> >>> but C++ is not one of them.
> >>>
> >>> I read the book and wanted to like it, I liked how
> constructors/destructors
> >>> stacked, that seemed elegant to me. I wanted that for all the methods
> and
> >>> soon found out only allocation/deallocation stacked. That seemed lame.
> >>>
> >>> C++ seems to encourage complexity and I hate complexity. I tolerate
> >>> it when there is no other way, but as my math kids say, if you have the
> >>> right answer, it is beautiful and simple. Complex is reserved for when
> >>> you haven't figured it out yet. That's not totally fair, I've written
> >>> some complex code but I did have the nagging feeling there must be a
> >>> simpler way.
> >>>
> >>> C++ teams are riddled with rules "don't use this, don't use that".
> It's
> >>> an interesting language to look at but I'll choose C over C++ every
> time.
> >>> You can fake OO in C, Sun did it with vnodes and it worked just fine.
> I'd
> >>> rather fake it and have it be simple than have C++ and have it be
> weird.
> >>>
> >>> That might be me just being an old fart but I have yet to have someone
> >>> I admire tell me I need to use C++.
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> COFF mailing list
> >>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> >>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
> >>>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> COFF mailing list
> >> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> >> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > COFF mailing list
> > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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From dave at horsfall.org Fri Dec 27 13:00:07 2019
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2019 14:00:07 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <m236d7xq67.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
<44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912261438290.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191226040024.GH3839@mcvoy.com>
<CACNPpeYjchtOF_caAwui2AhAdguHHYJepVVmG4DFnF+wx-Nk4A@mail.gmail.com>
<m236d7xq67.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912271358310.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
On Thu, 26 Dec 2019, Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via COFF wrote:
> This reminds me of something Erik Naggum said (about another language,
> and in harsher words (as was his wont), but the underlying point about
> the language affecting how problems are solved is the same):
>
> "It's not that perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language
> rewards idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has
> ever done."
As a Perl programmer, I second that :-) It's too easy to make mistakes.
-- Dave
From bakul at bitblocks.com Fri Dec 27 13:41:18 2019
From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 19:41:18 -0800
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
References: <B9ADAD5D-7EB0-4FB1-930D-C76C9C4238D3@bitblocks.com>
<9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <906BFA27-33C7-47A4-A814-7E7146B48B5C@bitblocks.com>
I of course agree that C++ is quite complex but the point I
was jokingly making is this: if you just want to study a
language for the sake of studying, any language that interests
you is fine. Just do it; find out for yourself if it is worth
studying. But if you want to write useful code in it, the
context matters.
If I want to contribute to a project using Java, I have to use
Java. If I want to write a program where most of the
essential libraries are in C++, it may make more sense to use
C++ (or I have to use a language that has a decent FFI or
write all of the equivalent code in my language of choice). Or
only interface to other components via network protocols. At
a prev. job I rewrote the C++ program I was supposed to fix in
Go mainly because of the last condition.
Another factor is this: if someone else is going to have to
continue maintaining your code once you move on, you'd better
use a language that is somewhat popular. A friend wrote all
his code in CL for a non-profit org but at some point he had
to give up control and the people who took over threw out all
his code and implemented something worse but using common
technologies. And I don't think my friend really saved any
time; he was just scratching an itch.
But no need to insult Lisp :-) CL is a fairly well thought out
language (and I say that as a fan of Scheme and not CL). What
matters is not design by committee but *who* is on the
committee!
On Dec 26, 2019, at 1:28 PM, David Arnold <davida at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> C++ is several different languages in one compiler.
>
> You can use it as a stricter C, as a C with some syntactic support of ADTs, as C++98-style OO, or as a C++17 style meta-programming system. And I’ve probably missed a few.
>
> The resulting complexity requires a lot of discipline to use successfully, especially in a large team.
>
> Java competes pretty successfully with the C++98-style OO subset. C11 now competes with the stricter C subset.
>
> The C++17 feature set competes with ... LISP, maybe? It’s a pretty clear winner for some application areas.
>
>
>
> d
>
>> On 27 Dec 2019, at 03:58, Bakul Shah <bakul at bitblocks.com> wrote:
>>
>> You can write “cleaner C++†but you will also need to read, understand & possibly
>> modify other people’s code. But don’t let the naysayers stop you. You must find
>> out for yourself! You must speak the native language of the community you want
>> to be part of. If you deride their local language and proselytize Esperanto, the
>> natives may not take kindly to you!
>>
>>> On Dec 25, 2019, at 9:43 PM, Wesley Parish <wobblygong at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I will admit the modern version reads a lot more cleanly than the
>>> older versions. They finally got rid of the pretense that a C++ header
>>> file was the same sort of thing as a C header file.
>>>
>>> I tried to learn it back in the nineties with one of the Sams Teach
>>> Yourself books and Borland's Turbo C++ compiler (before I switched to
>>> Linux), but at the end I was still as mystified as before. It took
>>> immersion into Java before I finally got the hang of object
>>> orientation, and Java's still a lot smaller than C++.
>>>
>>> A friend wants me to write some utilities for a C++ project he's got,
>>> so I figure I may as well help him out. Otherwise I'd be just as happy
>>> without C++. I'll try to keep the complexity down to the limit
>>> suggested by the Unix philosophy - a piece of code that does only one
>>> thing and does it well. :)
>>>
>>> Wesley Parish
>>>
>>>> On 12/26/19, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 02:44:06PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>>>>>>> On Thu, 26 Dec 2019, Wesley Parish wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm thinking of finally learning C++. [...]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> C++? That way lies madness :-) I had to teach myself it once (with the
>>>>>> aid
>>>>>> of The Book) and was glad to leave it behind. Oh, it was also the
>>>>>> first OO lang that I'd ever used, which probably didn't help.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I can still read it, bot no way will I go back to writing in it...
>>>>
>>>> Amen, brother. Bell Labs did some great things, a lot of great things,
>>>> but C++ is not one of them.
>>>>
>>>> I read the book and wanted to like it, I liked how constructors/destructors
>>>> stacked, that seemed elegant to me. I wanted that for all the methods and
>>>> soon found out only allocation/deallocation stacked. That seemed lame.
>>>>
>>>> C++ seems to encourage complexity and I hate complexity. I tolerate
>>>> it when there is no other way, but as my math kids say, if you have the
>>>> right answer, it is beautiful and simple. Complex is reserved for when
>>>> you haven't figured it out yet. That's not totally fair, I've written
>>>> some complex code but I did have the nagging feeling there must be a
>>>> simpler way.
>>>>
>>>> C++ teams are riddled with rules "don't use this, don't use that". It's
>>>> an interesting language to look at but I'll choose C over C++ every time.
>>>> You can fake OO in C, Sun did it with vnodes and it worked just fine. I'd
>>>> rather fake it and have it be simple than have C++ and have it be weird.
>>>>
>>>> That might be me just being an old fart but I have yet to have someone
>>>> I admire tell me I need to use C++.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> COFF mailing list
>>>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>>>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> COFF mailing list
>>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> COFF mailing list
>> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
>> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
From bakul at bitblocks.com Fri Dec 27 13:41:32 2019
From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 19:41:32 -0800
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <20191226213703.GN3839@mcvoy.com>
References: <B9ADAD5D-7EB0-4FB1-930D-C76C9C4238D3@bitblocks.com>
<9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
<20191226213703.GN3839@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <C1F01832-F1D1-4E80-98F2-5BE4D2855C97@bitblocks.com>
On Dec 26, 2019, at 1:37 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 07:28:27AM +1000, David Arnold wrote:
>> C++ is several different languages in one compiler.
>
> Bingo, well said. I find kitchen sink languages like that awful.
> It's not what you put in, it's what you don't let in.
Wait... I thought you liked Perl? :-)
From lm at mcvoy.com Fri Dec 27 14:00:43 2019
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 20:00:43 -0800
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <C1F01832-F1D1-4E80-98F2-5BE4D2855C97@bitblocks.com>
References: <B9ADAD5D-7EB0-4FB1-930D-C76C9C4238D3@bitblocks.com>
<9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
<20191226213703.GN3839@mcvoy.com>
<C1F01832-F1D1-4E80-98F2-5BE4D2855C97@bitblocks.com>
Message-ID: <20191227040043.GP3839@mcvoy.com>
On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 07:41:32PM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote:
> On Dec 26, 2019, at 1:37 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 07:28:27AM +1000, David Arnold wrote:
> >> C++ is several different languages in one compiler.
> >
> > Bingo, well said. I find kitchen sink languages like that awful.
> > It's not what you put in, it's what you don't let in.
>
> Wait... I thought you liked Perl? :-)
I really liked perl4. Perl past that not so much, perl5 solved one or
two problem that perl4 had but then added a boat load of new problems.
I never warmed up to perl5.
But perl4 felt like all the goodness from sed, all the goodness from
awk, and a general purpose programming language to boot. I actually
proposed, in the late 1980's, that Sun should consider rewriting a
bunch of /usr/bin in perl. A little crazy in the days of 20mhz
machines but I thought they would be more maintainable.
Perl4 wasn't a kitchen sink language, it was pulling from all of
Unix stuff that was useful. There really wasn't a lot in perl4
that wasn't in ksh/sed/awk. There was stuff like
while (<>) {
whatever
}
that did the work to either get it from STDIN or walk argv and get the
input from there. I actually liked that, seemed like progress.
--lm
From bakul at bitblocks.com Fri Dec 27 14:28:23 2019
From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah)
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2019 20:28:23 -0800
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <20191227040043.GP3839@mcvoy.com>
References: <B9ADAD5D-7EB0-4FB1-930D-C76C9C4238D3@bitblocks.com>
<9DDB7EE9-8E8E-4083-BB36-B15CD784FC3C@pobox.com>
<20191226213703.GN3839@mcvoy.com>
<C1F01832-F1D1-4E80-98F2-5BE4D2855C97@bitblocks.com>
<20191227040043.GP3839@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <CB27E29F-2ED5-4DE1-90A9-969D685FFAD1@bitblocks.com>
> On Dec 26, 2019, at 8:00 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 07:41:32PM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote:
>> On Dec 26, 2019, at 1:37 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 07:28:27AM +1000, David Arnold wrote:
>>>> C++ is several different languages in one compiler.
>>>
>>> Bingo, well said. I find kitchen sink languages like that awful.
>>> It's not what you put in, it's what you don't let in.
>>
>> Wait... I thought you liked Perl? :-)
>
> I really liked perl4. Perl past that not so much, perl5 solved one or
> two problem that perl4 had but then added a boat load of new problems.
> I never warmed up to perl5.
>
> But perl4 felt like all the goodness from sed, all the goodness from
> awk, and a general purpose programming language to boot. I actually
> proposed, in the late 1980's, that Sun should consider rewriting a
> bunch of /usr/bin in perl. A little crazy in the days of 20mhz
> machines but I thought they would be more maintainable.
>
> Perl4 wasn't a kitchen sink language, it was pulling from all of
> Unix stuff that was useful. There really wasn't a lot in perl4
> that wasn't in ksh/sed/awk. There was stuff like
>
> while (<>) {
> whatever
> }
>
> that did the work to either get it from STDIN or walk argv and get the
> input from there. I actually liked that, seemed like progress.
>
> --lm
I'd say it was a *good* kitchen sink! Sort of like CL in some ways :-)
Pretty much all of our chip test code was written in Perl4. We also
used it to generate verilog glue code + CRC code given a polynomial.
And we generated C code for all of Cisco compatible CLI frontend
with context sensitive help and word completion etc in Perl. And many
other tasks. Perl seemed to be the language of choice for scripting
in '90s. Python started taking over in the '00s.
Even back then I wrote some of my tools in Scheme as I found it easier
and as they were throwaway tools it didn't matter to others.
From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Fri Dec 27 17:02:30 2019
From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen)
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2019 08:02:30 +0100
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912271358310.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<CAP2nic376F5m5vNVCR5vGOFAViK5cyfFM2ahmYmUZFinxAjz0A@mail.gmail.com>
<CAGKEXNjYUYyFrUiFD7B6Om0_U5dzCTq_CL+aDj0VtK_MXQ0DoA@mail.gmail.com>
<44b3a941-fb3e-4fa1-b44d-fdbc34c0776d@gmail.com>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912261438290.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<20191226040024.GH3839@mcvoy.com>
<CACNPpeYjchtOF_caAwui2AhAdguHHYJepVVmG4DFnF+wx-Nk4A@mail.gmail.com>
<m236d7xq67.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912271358310.4488@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <57f9c4d85804366fc35fb6887394f995@firemail.de>
>As a Perl programmer, I second that :-) It's too easy to make mistakes.
hardly understand that harsh words, as once I written a large server in perl (strictly OO) running now for almost 20 years without any problems/bugs. I even did some changes after almost 15 years, having lost all perl know-how meanwhile, and to my surprise it worked perfectly.
From athornton at gmail.com Sat Dec 28 02:28:41 2019
From: athornton at gmail.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2019 09:28:41 -0700
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <f1aed23422482c6b05ce6edcc6c64bc2@firemail.de>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<7217cd90-a42a-68b2-dff1-4f90a1bf6063@kilonet.net>
<2faaeddb7acece00e4a7da6dd71b566c@firemail.de>
<38aeb1a1-6a03-54d7-3cfb-62b281b5e60b@kilonet.net>
<f1aed23422482c6b05ce6edcc6c64bc2@firemail.de>
Message-ID: <CAP2nic3bnJHrSOrb8PmWHiNiwy48Nwm1mJN_yWnapjV1_cw8Nw@mail.gmail.com>
I work in Python for my day job. Every day I use PyPi, the third-party
package repository, and every time I do I miss CPAN. Sure, there was a lot
of crap in CPAN but the repository itself was well organized. And Python's
testing framework has finally gotten OK-ish, but Perl always had good test
facilities.
I quite like the idea of "what musician is your favorite programming
language?" Perl is Captain Beefheart, maybe? Weird, eclectic, brilliant,
frequently incomprehensible? Java is definitely Coldplay: it's corporate
rock. It's fine. PHP is Nickelback.
Adam
On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 4:15 PM Thomas Paulsen <thomas.paulsen at firemail.de>
wrote:
> On 12/23/2019 2:54 PM, Thomas Paulsen wrote:
> >> you are right. However take into consideration that py is very popular
> in Linux and certainly Freebsd too.
> >
> > So is Taylor Swift ;)
> OK, then py is the Taylor Swift of the programming languages. ;-)
>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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From cym224 at gmail.com Sat Dec 28 03:46:28 2019
From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam)
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2019 12:46:28 -0500
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
Message-ID: <2edaa4e4-f842-93c6-8c8b-9f89349863d7@gmail.com>
On 12/25/19 12:31, Tomasz Rola wrote (in part):
> On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 06:27:48PM -0500, Nemo Nusquam wrote:
>> A recent thread makes me wonder which languages would people like to
>> learn? (I confess to trying, as Dave does, but time prevents
>> anything more that learing syntax and writing toy programmes. One
>> must write something substantial -- not synonomous with large -- to
>> really learn a language.)
>>
>> Erlang, Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell, and Scheme come to mind...
> I will swim upstream and say: if I had more free time, I would
> probably want to finish reading "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho,
> Kernighan snd Weinberger.
A former colleague wrote an assembler in AWK. We had a contract to
supply s/w for a chip still being developed. The (binary -- no source)
assembler supplied by the customer was not only buggy and slow, it
core-dumped on reaching an unknown op-code and they changed op-codes on
every iteration!
[...]
> But if you have not had experience with Scheme yet, try it out. LISPs
> in general are worth learning, IMHO. And much more practical than what
> a popular opinion says.
>
Indeed -- I have played with Racket on and off (especially as it builds
on my Sparc box).
N.
From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Sat Dec 28 04:24:52 2019
From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen)
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2019 19:24:52 +0100
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <CAP2nic3bnJHrSOrb8PmWHiNiwy48Nwm1mJN_yWnapjV1_cw8Nw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<7217cd90-a42a-68b2-dff1-4f90a1bf6063@kilonet.net>
<2faaeddb7acece00e4a7da6dd71b566c@firemail.de>
<38aeb1a1-6a03-54d7-3cfb-62b281b5e60b@kilonet.net>
<f1aed23422482c6b05ce6edcc6c64bc2@firemail.de>
<CAP2nic3bnJHrSOrb8PmWHiNiwy48Nwm1mJN_yWnapjV1_cw8Nw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <8abbdcabf349359248223c65d511ab1f@firemail.de>
> I work in Python for my day job. Every day I use PyPi, the third-party
> package repository, and every time I do I miss CPAN. Sure, there was a
> lot of crap in CPAN but the repository itself was well organized.
I agree. The perl package system is very good. On the other hand the golang
package system is very good too, and it was even better, when the compiler
still was written in C; thus much faster than today's written in go.
From tih at hamartun.priv.no Sat Dec 28 07:33:34 2019
From: tih at hamartun.priv.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo)
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2019 22:33:34 +0100
Subject: [COFF] What languges would you like to learn?
In-Reply-To: <2edaa4e4-f842-93c6-8c8b-9f89349863d7@gmail.com> (Nemo Nusquam's
message of "Fri, 27 Dec 2019 12:46:28 -0500")
References: <c47be9b7-e519-f762-5544-bda5a7f10d36@gmail.com>
<20191225173101.GA13390@tau1.ceti.pl>
<2edaa4e4-f842-93c6-8c8b-9f89349863d7@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <m2fth5jvwx.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Nemo Nusquam <cym224 at gmail.com> writes:
> On 12/25/19 12:31, Tomasz Rola wrote (in part):
>> I will swim upstream and say: if I had more free time, I would
>> probably want to finish reading "The AWK Programming Language" by Aho,
>> Kernighan snd Weinberger.
> A former colleague wrote an assembler in AWK.
Possibly inspired by, or even based on, the assembler that's shown as a
sample AWK program in that very book. :)
-tih
--
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay
From tih at hamartun.priv.no Sat Dec 28 07:42:55 2019
From: tih at hamartun.priv.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo)
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2019 22:42:55 +0100
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <8abbdcabf349359248223c65d511ab1f@firemail.de> (Thomas Paulsen's
message of "Fri, 27 Dec 2019 19:24:52 +0100")
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<7217cd90-a42a-68b2-dff1-4f90a1bf6063@kilonet.net>
<2faaeddb7acece00e4a7da6dd71b566c@firemail.de>
<38aeb1a1-6a03-54d7-3cfb-62b281b5e60b@kilonet.net>
<f1aed23422482c6b05ce6edcc6c64bc2@firemail.de>
<CAP2nic3bnJHrSOrb8PmWHiNiwy48Nwm1mJN_yWnapjV1_cw8Nw@mail.gmail.com>
<8abbdcabf349359248223c65d511ab1f@firemail.de>
Message-ID: <m2blrtjvhc.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Thomas Paulsen <thomas.paulsen at firemail.de> writes:
>> I work in Python for my day job. Every day I use PyPi, the third-party
>> package repository, and every time I do I miss CPAN. Sure, there was a
>> lot of crap in CPAN but the repository itself was well organized.
> I agree. The perl package system is very good.
The package system may have been good, but what I remember most clearly
from working with it is how the dependencies would always get in each
others' way. "This package depends on version 0.0.3a of pl-foo, but
also on this other package, which in turn depends on version 0.0.3b of
pl-foo, and of course 0.0.3a and 0.0.3b have completely incompatible
APIs, so you're screwed."
That's probably the start of the path leading to Docker, right there.
-tih
--
cpan. cpanic. cpandemonium.
From paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com Sat Dec 28 08:13:26 2019
From: paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com (Paul Palmer)
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2019 16:13:26 -0600
Subject: [COFF] Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019
In-Reply-To: <m2blrtjvhc.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
References: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1912161130400.1698@mira.opentrend.net>
<20191221222234.GT95360@eureka.lemis.com>
<8c757e99-bec1-b6d8-0d6a-96f55fbb2e35@kilonet.net>
<alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.1912230828520.85345@aneurin.horsfall.org>
<7217cd90-a42a-68b2-dff1-4f90a1bf6063@kilonet.net>
<2faaeddb7acece00e4a7da6dd71b566c@firemail.de>
<38aeb1a1-6a03-54d7-3cfb-62b281b5e60b@kilonet.net>
<f1aed23422482c6b05ce6edcc6c64bc2@firemail.de>
<CAP2nic3bnJHrSOrb8PmWHiNiwy48Nwm1mJN_yWnapjV1_cw8Nw@mail.gmail.com>
<8abbdcabf349359248223c65d511ab1f@firemail.de>
<m2blrtjvhc.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
Message-ID: <CAM6uckkRK8T90h80nHrcb1usCGc=AzVYaM-E5iYxBC2JA=XCKw@mail.gmail.com>
This is true but if you can run CPAN shell (I think it's called) it takes
care of this for you.
On Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 3:43 PM Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via COFF <
coff at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> Thomas Paulsen <thomas.paulsen at firemail.de> writes:
>
> >> I work in Python for my day job. Every day I use PyPi, the third-party
> >> package repository, and every time I do I miss CPAN. Sure, there was a
> >> lot of crap in CPAN but the repository itself was well organized.
> > I agree. The perl package system is very good.
>
> The package system may have been good, but what I remember most clearly
> from working with it is how the dependencies would always get in each
> others' way. "This package depends on version 0.0.3a of pl-foo, but
> also on this other package, which in turn depends on version 0.0.3b of
> pl-foo, and of course 0.0.3a and 0.0.3b have completely incompatible
> APIs, so you're screwed."
>
> That's probably the start of the path leading to Docker, right there.
>
> -tih
> --
> cpan. cpanic. cpandemonium.
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff
>
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