On 10/23/24 8:46 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 22:25:37 -0000 (UTC), Waldek Hebisch wrote:
>
>> Makers of RP2040 intend it as Micro-Python board, but AFAIK Micro-Python
>> is much slower and larger than Forth.
>
> Still, it seems able to do the job rather well.

NOW ... but not "then" ..... everybody has become
spoiled by fast CPUs with lots of memory. This
is not ubiquitous though, many microcontroller
projects may still have to deal with very very
tight resources/speed.

Still, for MOST uses I'd rec a good 'C' compiler
and/or some ASM. 'C' compilers can be VERY tight
these days if you set all the right flags, maybe
tighter than some hand-coded ASM.

Of course something like the PIC-12x series are
too tiny for even FORTH.

But if you want/need an interpreter ... FORTH may
still be your best choice for such environments.
Even MicroPython is a fat pig compared to FORTH.

I like the Pic12x units because you can program
them to emulate two or three of the (faster)
74HC logic chips, add a little pre-processing
IQ for even cheaper than the 74HC chips.

ANYway, I'd say there may still be some joy in
FORTH ... if you're open to the experience.

On 24/10/2024 00:00, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 14:33:11 +0300, magardner2010 wrote:
>
>> And if I might interject, I am a 24-year old who has not that long ago
>> started learning the UXN (https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/uxn.html) system.
>> While it isn't a bare-metal FORTH, targetting a virtual machine, in
>> terms of learning about FORTHs, I think it qualifies.
>
> Cool. And I see it’s originally written in C. Are you learning C as well?

I learned C++ in school, and I am mostly familiar with what the
differences are (although it was not that long ago that I found out that
C only added the option to specify the underlying type of an enum within
the last 3-4 years, which surprised me). Nowadays I prefer to use Ada,
although I am also looking into Zig.

On 24 Oct 2024 00:55:42 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> As you say in the real world there are many engineering decisions to be
> made and the suitable programming language is one of them.

MicroPython seems to be popular among the Maker crowd. Remember these folk
are creating things for their own amusement and that of others like them;
they are not out to do mass production of consumer items.

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 06:45:36 +0300, magardner2010 wrote:

> Nowadays I prefer to use Ada, although I am also looking into Zig.

Ada is cool, too, though mainly used for safety-critical stuff.

Anything higher-level? Like Python?

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 22:13:49 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> ... everybody has become spoiled by fast CPUs with lots of memory.

Do you drive an automatic? Everybody does on the US, don’t they?

Talk about “spoiled”. I can claim moral superiority over you because I
drive a manual. By choice!

On 10/22/24 10:08 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On 23 Oct 2024 01:49:42 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> Diddy may have been affluent but he hardly was elite.
>
> Sure he was -- how else did he get away with his criminal acts for so
> long?
>
> Phil Spector, too, was affluent elite -- and did lots of unsavoury things
> before killing Lana Clarkson.
>
>> One could, and you probably do, assume some huge conspiracy of
>> privileged whites to keep people of color down, or one could ask if
>> there is more to the story.
>
> Some say Elvis Presley was created specifically to stop white girls going
> wild over Chuck Berry.
>
> All it did was delay the inevitable.

Sorta.

Elvis though was not so much a product of Big Money
or Big Politics ... he was naturally appealing and
came to fame from the bottom up.

Indeed the USG tried to destroy his career by drafting
him into the mil. Other "lesser" stars were promoted as
replacements during that time. None had the charisma
however ... so it didn't work.

I'm old enough to REMEMBER some of this stuff.

But none of it had anything to do with Linux ...

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 03:53:23 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On 24 Oct 2024 00:55:42 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> As you say in the real world there are many engineering decisions to be
>> made and the suitable programming language is one of them.
>
> MicroPython seems to be popular among the Maker crowd. Remember these
> folk are creating things for their own amusement and that of others like
> them; they are not out to do mass production of consumer items.

Most of the projects I've seen aren't stressing the processor so
MicroPython or CircuitPython work fine. A duty cycle that's pretty close
on a PWM output, for examole, is good enough.

It's interesting Arduino basically started with C++. Th UNO doesn't have
the resources for MicroPython.

https://circuitpython.org/downloads

That's CircuitPython but clise enough. If you filter by Arduino it's
mostly the Nano boards.

https://circuitpython.org/downloads?manufacturers=Arduino

CircuitPython tends to be more customized particularly in the Adafruit
products but it doesn't have the _thread module. It's still experimental
but appeared to work on the Pico.

There is no shortage of choices in the maker world. I really hope it gains
strength and gets people closer to hardware. It's come a long way from the
basic AVR or PIC stuff.

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 03:55:30 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 22:13:49 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> ... everybody has become spoiled by fast CPUs with lots of memory.
>
> Do you drive an automatic? Everybody does on the US, don’t they?

Not everybody. My pickup is manual. My first Yaris was manual and I
preferred it. Circumstances intervened. It was totaled by a snowplow in
the same month Japan was facing a meltdown. I took what I could get, which
was an automatic. I traded it for a 2018 in 2020. I got a good deal on the
leftover and Toyota doesn't make the Yaris anymore. Even that year the
sedan was really a Mazda 2, with a different engine than the hatchback.

Oh, and all three bikes are manual. About 20 years ago I was selling a
Yamaha Seca and my boss expressed interest until he found out it wasn't an
automatic. I was relieved. He was an excellent manager but I didn't think
he'd be very good on a bike.

> Talk about “spoiled”. I can claim moral superiority over you because I
> drive a manual. By choice!

What level of superiority do I get for putting a few hundred thousand
mines on a Kenworth 13 speed and Volvo White 9 speed?" I'll be honest and
admit with the VW you rarely used the stump puller gear so it was
effectively an 8 speed.

After my father died my mother wanted to buy a new car. She was 70 at the
time and I had to convince her she could drive an automatic. She'd been
driving since 1921 and never had driven one. Even in the '60s manual were
hard to find but my father didn't like automatics.

On 10/23/24 11:54 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 06:45:36 +0300, magardner2010 wrote:
>
>> Nowadays I prefer to use Ada, although I am also looking into Zig.
>
> Ada is cool, too, though mainly used for safety-critical stuff.
>
> Anything higher-level? Like Python?

ADA is the very def of "fascist". It'd be cruel
and unusual punishment to be expected to program
a project using it.

I did a few small-ish, but kinda complex, experimental
apps in ADA ... and then FLUSHED it. WAY WAY too much
work.

On 10/23/24 4:05 PM, rbowman wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 15:32:35 -0000 (UTC), Alfred Falk wrote:
>
>> rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote in
>> news:lnr0n6Ffh95U6@mid.individual.net:
>>
>>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 11:14:31 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>>>
>>>> I used to argue against abortion, but with all the fuss I have come to
>>>> realize that my libertarian instincts have risen to the top. Just have
>>>> the government stay the h*ll out of it.
>>>
>>> Looking at the demographics I may favor abortion with a tubal ligation
>>> thrown in for free. I also wonder if those seeking abortions should
>>> have a sign around their necks saying 'I am too stupid to practice
>>> birth control.'
>>
>> What demographics are you looking at?
>> Short of tubal ligation and bilateral bolectomy, birth controls methods
>> are not failure-proof.
>
> https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7436774/

Look, neither science or philosophy will provide
The Answer about abortions - it's a "human issue",
our very complex prob. At best we just wing it.

*I* look at it kinda scientifically, neural dev,
which makes me a "semesterist" on the issue - but
I can't justify dictating to the world.

Oh, and theoretical "what ifs" cannot dictate broader
public policy - it's a bottomless pit there.

SO ... I'll just apply my (small-L) libertarian instincts
and vote (DID vote) for a govt hands-off policy. My HOPE
is that 99+ percent will have enough of an ethical sense
to do the right thing rather than insisting a 8.99 month
baby be sucked out and thrown in the trash. A few will not,
but there are always a few ... just gotta bear it for the
greater good, for freedom.

Ummm ... btw ... males should not get a big vote over
this issue - it's unique to women in many dimensions.

What's really MAGA is not carved in stone or on the
face of the moon ... gotta THINK a bit about it, look
at all the angles, and trend towards more Power To
The People even if it hurts sometimes. The USA has
been one of the few - now almost the ONLY - to even
consider the rights/power of The People. I suggest we
stick with that 'anomaly'.

But this has little to do with Linux ... ok, maybe
as a very peripheral sensibility ........

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 02:03:13 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> [Ada] is the very def of "fascist". It'd be cruel and unusual
> punishment to be expected to program a project using it.

If human lives are at stake, the bondage-and-discipline approach works
wonders. Keeps you on your toes.

On 10/23/24 9:13 PM, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
> On 10/23/24 5:23 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 07:43:46 -0700, John Ames wrote:
>>
>>> diced and julienned plagiarism ...
>>
>> You say “plagiarism”, I say “code reuse”. Something which is explicitly
>> allowed by Free Software licences.
>
>
>   Hey, don't we owe huge royalties to the Sumerians
>   who invented the brick ?  :-)

Oh ... how many thousand years did the 'product concept'
group work on the brick ? How big, what shape exactly,
what color selections ... ? :-)

On 10/24/24 2:36 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 02:03:13 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> [Ada] is the very def of "fascist". It'd be cruel and unusual
>> punishment to be expected to program a project using it.
>
> If human lives are at stake, the bondage-and-discipline approach works
> wonders. Keeps you on your toes.

Or MAYBE just hire some good, wise, 'C' programmers ...

Nobody from M$ ... they STILL can't get past buffer
overflow issues .......

On 24/10/2024 06:54, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 06:45:36 +0300, magardner2010 wrote:
>
>> Nowadays I prefer to use Ada, although I am also looking into Zig.
>
> Ada is cool, too, though mainly used for safety-critical stuff.
>
> Anything higher-level? Like Python?
>

Python is the first language I learned (back in the 2.6 days, I think,
14-ish years ago). Since then, I have learned the folly of my ways and
embraced stronger type systems, except where my work requires otherwise,
like javascript (worse than INTERCAL, and if you use a framework, worse
than INTERCAL combined with ~ATH) or php (not as bad as its reputation
would suggest. I suspect a not insignificant part of said reputation is
because of Wordpress). perl, awk, and raku are also fun, and I'd like to
learn Tcl some day.

Also, naturally, shell scripting.

I have come to see C as having a really weak type system, now that I've
seen the light of Ada. C++ is worse, and I won't even deign Python with
a description.

On Wed, 23 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 23/10/2024 16:40, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> On 2024-10-23, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2024-10-22, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>
>
>>>> I.e., a zero-sum game.
>>>
>>> No, it is not, and that is proven by economics. The proof is that we are
>>> 8.2 billion people on the planet and we've never had it better. If economy
>>> was zero sum, we'd be dead by now.
>>
>> Give it time...
>>
> My statement wasn't meant to reflect reality, only how socialists *think*
> about wealth.

This is the truth!

On Thu, 23 Oct 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 21:18:20 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On 23 Oct 2024 18:00:55 GMT, vallor wrote:
>>
>>> My politics are middle-of-the-road by any other measure, but many
>>> red-state denizens would consider me -- not "left", not even
>>> "left-wing", but "leftist" and "a dad-blurned lib'rul!"
>>
>> Welcome to the normal world. Which many (most?) people in the US seem to
>> consider “radical left”. Here in NZ, we call it just another godless
>> atheist socialist liberal secular democracy.
>>
>>> Meanwhile, we use Linux _a lot_ in our business. I daresay Linux is a
>>> more useful server and workstation OS than anything else.
>>
>> It seems to have pretty much put an end to Microsoft’s Windows Server
>> business--at least the on-premises part. As well as killing off Windows
>> Home Server, Windows Media Center, Windows Server HPC Edition ...
>
> Don't get your hopes up. We had two sites that ran Linux on the servers.
> That made a great deal of sense since the core programs were developed on
> AIX. The Linux servers lasted as long as the administrator was a Linux
> fan. The new boss went back to Windows Server.

Was it very difficult to develop on AIX and then move stuff over to linux?

On Thu, 23 Oct 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 22:03:50 GMT, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 11:34:13 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>
>>>> The problem is that we can in theory produce marvellous low entropy
>>>> products like computers, but only at the expense of increasing entropy
>>>> elsewhere.
>>>
>>> There is an absolutely massive source of energy literally pouring down
>>> on us, that we can use for this entropy reduction. It’s so massive, it’s
>>> inconceivable (at this stage in our civilization) that we could ever
>>> exhaust it. It supplies this energy at the rate of about a kilowatt of
>>> power per square metre of Earth’s daylit surface.
>>
>> Any given square meter will only be receiving maximal insolation for a
>> fairly short time with seasonal variations in most locations. Better to
>> measure average KWh/m2 (about 6 ignoring clouds). Assuming 20% solar
>> panel efficiency, that drops it about 1.2KWh/m2 on a sunny day. Typical
>> homes in the states use 30KWh/day, about 25m2 of panels. A data center
>> can use 100 to 200KWh an hour or more. Some data centers use far more.
>> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m#section.13.1
>
> There is a reason for the attempt to reactivate Three Mile Island rather
> than putting up solar panels around Harrisburg.
>
> I've used a small solar setup that was adequate for my needs -- in
> southern Arizona about 25 miles from the border. Even there during an
> atypical rainy winter I had to make decisions about usage. The solar
> cooker crowd go used to very rare roasts.
>
> In Montana it's much more sketchy. My indicator is the mobile speed
> indicators. They're radar units on a trailer with a display to show your
> speed. It flashes if you're above the limit but so far they are only a
> gentle reminder and don't issue a ticket. They are powered by solar
> panels. They work great during sunny August weather, not so great this
> time of year.
>
> Now you could blanket the entire state of Arizona with solar panels. Then
> you need to deal with distribution and all the law suits by parties that
> don't want transmission lines in their backyard. Wind and hydro both have
> the same problem.
>

Energy should be collected by solar in space, and then beamed down to
eart. This is the only way! (Except nuclear of course! And geothermal and
hydro!)

On 24/10/2024 09:11, D wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2024, rbowman wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 21:18:20 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> On 23 Oct 2024 18:00:55 GMT, vallor wrote:
>>>
>>>> My politics are middle-of-the-road by any other measure, but many
>>>> red-state denizens would consider me -- not "left", not even
>>>> "left-wing", but "leftist" and "a dad-blurned lib'rul!"
>>>
>>> Welcome to the normal world. Which many (most?) people in the US seem to
>>> consider “radical left”. Here in NZ, we call it just another godless
>>> atheist socialist liberal secular democracy.
>>>
>>>> Meanwhile, we use Linux _a lot_ in our business.  I daresay Linux is a
>>>> more useful server and workstation OS than anything else.
>>>
>>> It seems to have pretty much put an end to Microsoft’s Windows Server
>>> business--at least the on-premises part. As well as killing off Windows
>>> Home Server, Windows Media Center, Windows Server HPC Edition ...
>>
>> Don't get your hopes up. We had two sites that ran Linux on the servers.
>> That made a great deal of sense since the core programs were developed on
>> AIX. The Linux servers lasted as long as the administrator was a Linux
>> fan. The new boss went back to Windows Server.
>
> Was it very difficult to develop on AIX and then move stuff over to linux?

It shouldnt be. Especially away from direct contact with IO

Most Unix programs compile and run on Linux unaltered

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.
-- Yogi Berra

On 24/10/2024 07:38, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
> On 10/23/24 9:13 PM, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>> On 10/23/24 5:23 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 07:43:46 -0700, John Ames wrote:
>>>
>>>> diced and julienned plagiarism ...
>>>
>>> You say “plagiarism”, I say “code reuse”. Something which is explicitly
>>> allowed by Free Software licences.
>>
>>
>>    Hey, don't we owe huge royalties to the Sumerians
>>    who invented the brick ?  :-)
>
>
>   Oh ... how many thousand years did the 'product concept'
>   group work on the brick ? How big, what shape exactly,
>   what color selections ... ?  :-)
rounded corners.,..

--
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”
― Groucho Marx

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 03:55:30 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> Do you drive an automatic? Everybody does on the US, don’t they?
>
> Talk about “spoiled”. I can claim moral superiority over you because
> I drive a manual. By choice!

My '74 Volkswagen says hi ;P

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 10:11:09 +0200, D wrote:

> Was it very difficult to develop on AIX and then move stuff over to
> linux?

Not very. Most of it was having different compiler flags and libs in the
Makefiles. AIX was very forgiving about null references and a few other
things that Linux was picky about so there was a burst of bug fixes that
improved the code.

IPC was done with ONC-RPC so there was no problem with AIX daemons and
Linux clients. Eventually that led to some inefficiency. RS6000 is big
endian and the ONC-RPC XDR encoding is big endian across the network. The
Linux boxes would swap the order when decoding the XDR. When clients
switched to cheaper x86 boxes the data was still big-endian encoded on the
little-endian machines, shipped across the network, and decoded back to
little-endian.

The MKS Nutcracker tools and runtime was used on Windows boxes so that was
another set of entries in the Makefiles to build the Windows executables.
Again there weren't a lot of changes.

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 10:11:09 +0200, D wrote:
>
>> Was it very difficult to develop on AIX and then move stuff over to
>> linux?
>
> Not very. Most of it was having different compiler flags and libs in the
> Makefiles. AIX was very forgiving about null references and a few other
> things that Linux was picky about so there was a burst of bug fixes that
> improved the code.
>
> IPC was done with ONC-RPC so there was no problem with AIX daemons and
> Linux clients. Eventually that led to some inefficiency. RS6000 is big
> endian and the ONC-RPC XDR encoding is big endian across the network. The
> Linux boxes would swap the order when decoding the XDR. When clients
> switched to cheaper x86 boxes the data was still big-endian encoded on the
> little-endian machines, shipped across the network, and decoded back to
> little-endian.
>
> The MKS Nutcracker tools and runtime was used on Windows boxes so that was
> another set of entries in the Makefiles to build the Windows executables.
> Again there weren't a lot of changes.
>

Very interesting! Thank you very much for the description.

On 2024-10-23, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> On 2024-10-23, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2024-10-22, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>
>>>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>>>> In that sense the companies themselves have gone 'socialist' in that, like
>>>>>> Marx, they regard economics as a zero sum game.
>>>>>
>>>>> Incorrect. By design they do what they do, and whether the economy is
>>>>> zero sum (it is not) or not, does not really apply. That is why todays
>>>>> crypto-socialist government is so extremely dangerous. It subverts and
>>>>> distorts the markets, just by existing.
>>>>
>>>> As opposed to large corporations subverting and distorting the markets,
>>>> as God intended.
>>>
>>> They do it with the help of the governments. By themselves, per
>>> definition, they are not able to over time.
>>>
>>>>>> That is, it isn't about creating more wealth, it's about who gets to own
>>>>>> what there is left.
>>>>>
>>>>> True.
>>>>
>>>> I.e., a zero-sum game.
>>>
>>> No, it is not, and that is proven by economics. The proof is that we are
>>> 8.2 billion people on the planet and we've never had it better.

FSVO "we".

>>> If economy was zero sum, we'd be dead by now.
>>
>> Give it time...
>
> Exactly. No proof, so far.

"So far, so good," the man falling past the 5th floor of the
Empire State building was heard to say.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 03:11:58 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> On 10/24/24 2:36 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 02:03:13 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>
>>> [Ada] is the very def of "fascist". It'd be cruel and unusual
>>> punishment to be expected to program a project using it.
>>
>> If human lives are at stake, the bondage-and-discipline approach works
>> wonders. Keeps you on your toes.
>
> Or MAYBE just hire some good, wise, 'C' programmers ...

The good, wise ones would not eschew Ada.

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 10:56:50 +0300, magardner2010 wrote:

> Python is the first language I learned (back in the 2.6 days, I think,
> 14-ish years ago). Since then, I have learned the folly of my ways and
> embraced stronger type systems ...

Did you learn about lexical binding? Consider this code:

def makefunc(val, step) :

def func() :
nonlocal val
val += step
return val
#end func

#begin makefunc
return func
#end makefunc

f1 = makefunc(1, 1)
f2 = makefunc(5, -1)
print(f1())
print(f2())
print(f1())
print(f2())
print(f1())
print(f2())

Output:

2
4
3
3
4
2

What’s going on here?