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pedrow

Re:Emacs bug: describe-key and lambda too poetic on Saturday April 06, 2024 @03:08AM (#39950597)
It isn't, but there is a poetry mode for emacs[0] and a mode for managing Python's poetry (which is a tool for dependency management)[1]

[0]: https://www.bobnewell.net/publish/35years/poetry.html [1]: https://github.com/cybniv/poetry.el

Re:Recoil – Retro Computer Image Library on Sunday November 12, 2023 @04:32AM (#38238745)
I had a look at the repo in https://sourceforge.net/p/recoil/code/ci/master/tree/ - I think the meat of it is a giant file called 'recoil.fu' (22481 lines long)

[edit] it is written in the 'Fusion Language' https://github.com/fusionlanguage/fut (and not https://gaelduval.com/introducing-fusion-the-ultimate-progra... !) - there's a playground at http://fusion-lang.org/ . I'd never heard of it before but seems a bit like Haxe perhaps?

Re:What Learning APL Taught Me About Python on Thursday August 17, 2023 @04:58AM (#37158989)
I believe they were based on Miranda[0] (1985) but they have a longer history than that, maybe under a different name.

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_(programming_language)...

I fondly remember using sites like this to download stuff (ok, apogee games mostly!) in the 1990s. I could FTP to the university VAX which would exceed my 'soft quota' of disk space every time, then I'd have to get the files onto a floppy and delete them before my account locked up.

Does anyone know if the SunSites are still mirrored anywhere? There used to be a dir called 'programming' full of weird and whacky languages which I'd love to see again. For example there was one called ALLOY by Thanasis Mitsolides. His PhD is still available on the internet but the code in usable format is not, as far as I can see.

Re:IBM PL/S Machine-oriented programming language [pdf] on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @06:01AM (#36784091)
I think https://wiki.c2.com/?PlsLanguage is informative. PL/S was more suitable for writing low-level code due to some extra options and it didn't need a full runtime environment. Wikipedia suggests IBM didn't (initially) release it because it meant that only they could alter the operating system, and also to avoid handing any advantage to their competitors.
For comparison FreeRTOS[0] is, at minimum, about 9000 LOC[1] at least according to the article (I don't know when it was written), so 2000 lines is indeed pretty small.

[0]: https://www.freertos.org/ [1]: https://aosabook.org/en/v2/freertos.html

Are there, or have there been, devices where one might have seen Inferno running 'in the wild' e.g. digital signs, PoS terminals etc.?
Re:WordPerfect for Unix Character Terminals on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @08:49AM (#35538809)
Also you need a template to drop over the function keys. How would that work on a modern keyboard!?

https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1604126863067008/UI__3_WordPer...

Re:OpenBSD 7.3 on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @06:31AM (#35523154)
I have an OpenBSD install in a VM for the reason cited by ninjin:

> Personally, a different userland and directory structure usually also beats out Linux-isms.

I just upgraded from 7.2 with sysupgrade then pkg_add -u and it worked perfectly without any intervention from me. In the past I remember it needing a bit of tweaking and finger-crossing. Bravo OpenBSD!

This must be really disappointing for you - I think most people would agree you didn't break the 'spirit' of the rules even if you did maybe break the letter of the rules.

It would be great if you could re-draft that clause in a way which makes sense, and then get back to your teacher to see if she can influence the competition organisers. That way, next year's competition will be just a little fairer.

Re:Make WLAN and Bluetooth basically work for CI20 on Thursday February 16, 2023 @07:45AM (#34817969)
Imagination Technology's Creator Ci20 was a MIPS board for hackers released in 2014. Despite the subsequent decline of MIPS, people are still improving Linux support for this board.
Re:What Is ChatGPT Doing and Why Does It Work? on Wednesday February 15, 2023 @07:24AM (#34802863)
I thought this was an enjoyable and informative article but [0]

> As a personal comparison, my total lifetime output ... has been... [78 million words] And, yes, I’ll train a bot from all of that.

for non-Wolfram fans - take cover there is a potentially infinite future supply!

[0]: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-... (paragraph 2)

There was a thing about tying shoelaces a few years back, for example this from the BBC [1]. Apparently I was doing it wrong but anyway I prefer the extra back exercise I get from bending down to retie.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT2XiPgiZK8

Re:Fun with macOS's Sip on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @09:47AM (#34518836)
Would it be an option to compile your own versions of `ls` et al., maybe from the Darwin source (if available, I don't know) or one of the BSDs? Does what you're trying to do depend on the specific implementation of Apple's utilities?
Is there a list of JEPs which includes the affiliation of the person proposing them? It would be interesting to see how many get approved. I would expect it's a lot easier to make progress from 'inside the tent' i.e. an employee of Oracle, Red Hat etc.

Having said that, from the link posted by carimura [0] it looks like the author of this one is doing an excellent job of engaging with Brian Goetz and others at oracle.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34485541

Re:Sierra’s Macintosh Timebomb on Friday January 13, 2023 @04:22PM (#34374063)
Also Blade Runner reference
Re:Falsehoods programmers believe about undefined behavior on Monday November 28, 2022 @08:10AM (#33773170)
Can you just check, I don't think the line *p=1 will even compile given the definition of p
Re:Why do we call it “boilerplate code?” on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @03:33PM (#33614626)
"Bootstrap" from which we get "booting up" and "reboot" is another one[0]

[0]: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=bootstrap

Re:Good Quality DOSBox Video Capture on Tuesday November 08, 2022 @09:37AM (#33519410)
Is the aspect ratio part (needing to stretch from 8:5 to 4:3) because the IBM PC didn't have square pixels?
Re:The Changing Fortunes of Japanese Camera Manufacturers on Friday October 28, 2022 @03:58AM (#33368805)
I don't know if he invented it, but I always associate that phrase with John Gruber, e.g. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/04/battelle-apple
Re:BQN: Finally, an APL for your flying saucer on Thursday October 13, 2022 @05:33AM (#33188990)
I initially thought the name came from one letter after APL but, no, that would be BQM. You can verify this using the language itself

    > "APL"+1
    "BQM"
Overall looks interesting and definitely worth a play with!
Re:Something I implemented today: “is void” on Monday September 26, 2022 @05:05AM (#32980927)
I was initially thrown by the example code which doesn't look like C++ at all:

    main: () -> int = { ... }
I learned this is 'Cpp2' which was also discussed by Herb Sutter recently[0]. I don't know if there is a desire for C++ (i.e. Cpp1) to become Cpp2 at some point - could this ever happen?

[0]: https://herbsutter.com/tag/cpp2/

Re:The Changes for the 2nd Edition of “Code” on Thursday September 08, 2022 @11:57AM (#32767453)
Thanks. I have to look this up every time (I'm in the UK) so for those like me, 5th graders are aged 10-11 normally.
Re:The Changes for the 2nd Edition of “Code” on Thursday September 08, 2022 @11:19AM (#32766867)
From someone who's read the 1st edition, what age would this be suitable for? From CP's description it didn't sound like it needed any advanced knowledge to read. I'm wondering if I could get my kids interested in it
Also it influenced Objective-C[0] - it's mostly C with message passing added to it.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C

Re:The end of the manual transmission is near? on Thursday August 25, 2022 @05:02AM (#32591304)
Have we properly considered the effect on Hollywood? No car chase is complete without the timely down-shift, the roar of the engine and (usually) the massive fireball when the villain drives into a wall. With EVs/automatic transmission they're going to have to think of something else!
Re:Having, a less understood SQL clause on Saturday August 06, 2022 @05:38AM (#32366525)
My SQL knowledge is very limited - I had heard of HAVING but not GROUP BY CUBE or COALESCE - but one thing stood out: "The rewritten sql ... ran in a few seconds compared to over half an hour for the original query." I know there were four million rows in the dataset, but is 30 minutes the kind of run-time you would expect for a query like this?
Re:DESQview/X: Forgotten mid-1990s OS from the future on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @03:23PM (#29397001)
This sounds like it would need a lot of RAM to run (or, at least, more than was common in 1994). Can anyone comment on its system requirements?

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