News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

gregalt

Re:What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Actually Do? (2018) on Wednesday December 18, 2024 @12:44PM (#42452850)
I talk about his "Series L" tables here and link to scans of them: https://pairdebuggingwithlovelace.hashnode.dev/lovelaces-pro...
Re:What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Actually Do? (2018) on Wednesday December 18, 2024 @12:40PM (#42452807)
Here's a blog series where I get her program running on a modern computer using a simple transliteration to C: https://pairdebuggingwithlovelace.hashnode.dev/
Here's my Mandelbrot set generator written in the table language Ada Lovelace wrote her 1843 program for Babbage's Analytical Engine: https://pairdebuggingwithlovelace.hashnode.dev/

The trickiest part was figuring out how to exploit fixed-point underflow to do the equivalent of if(a>4.0) when the only conditional I could use was if(a==0), using arithmetic operations to force underflow for all a>4.0

Re:A Logical Coding System Applied to the Eniac (1948) [pdf] on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @04:10PM (#41572166)
I like reading the original paper in it's original format, but here is searchable text version: https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/48eniac-coding/index...
Re:A Logical Coding System Applied to the Eniac (1948) [pdf] on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @04:08PM (#41572130)
A 1948 report on the conversion of ENIAC from being programmed by a complex wiring of cables and setting switches to the more modern stored program. The writing is accessible, but the introduction and section on test programs are probably most interesting.
Re:It's Hard Not to Love ReMarkable's New Colorful E Ink Tablet on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @07:19AM (#41566482)
How hard is it to print to pdf on a PC/laptop and transfer to the remarkable? I used to do that on my ancient Kindle DX, which I remember being a bit clunky, but not too bad with wireless sync. It was nice avoiding stacks and stacks of paper.
Re:Does anyone use sound effects in their dev environment? on Monday September 16, 2024 @10:55AM (#41556731)
Alam Turing used the "hoot" instruction on the Manchester computer in the 1940s to signal different things for debugging https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37507707