All n-complete languages will share certain similarities in how they handle discrete requirements. How the entire language is used to express solutions to problems will not be the same in all cases. This is probably what most of us respond to when we say we do or do not like a particular language for a given solution (or at all).
A more accurate test would be writing a solution that toggles a bunch of motors on, off and changes direction and speed in any arbitrary combination. Another good test is a word processor or desktop publishing app.
Is your solution expressed well in the language? Does it allow you to build upon previous work? Can you abstract the various small problems well enough to decompose them into small easily tested chunks?
One of the best parts of real-world FORTH is the ability to incrementally build your app, and to build unit-testing and full test-harnesses right into an application. Once the product is shipped, these can be left in (or not, depending on how you want it) with almost no impact on overall performance.
Note that I am not saying this cannot be done in other languages, only that FORTH makes it trivial to develop these handy tools right alongside your regular development activities.
The best Stupid Forth Trick I ever learned was changing the number based from octal, decimal or hex to an arbitrary number like 128 or 256 (decimal).
Every single printable ASCII character becomes a number. Any language that allows you to define cntrl-G as a valid number you can compute with has to be on a hackers list of all-time favourites.
Of course, changing it back again may be a bit of a challenge. For some reason, all my compiled words keep ending up on the stack...
Most of the Forth SW vendors carry copies of "Thinking...". Ask on comp.lang.forth about the (very outdated) FAQ which has a lot of refs to vendors, or just Google for 'em.
Why not just use the sort command? Then it would be a no-liner.
The example may have been weak, but the point was to solve a problem programmatically. Nobody said that all one needed to do was sort some strings. More likely, these strings would need to be sorted before being massage in some other manner based on logic of some sort.
Well, I can report that my (publicly traded) corp is pretty OBSD friendly. Almost all our edge hosts on our international VPN or the DMZ are OpenBSD. It does most routing, all email and spam filtering.
It isn't doing the VPN proper right now, because we've invested too much in a commercial VPN. Also, most of our discrete host access to the VPN (over dialup or broadband) is Microsoft PPTP (which is lingua franca in terms of client access). We use NT exclusively for authentication/authorization (except for the NIS stuff on all our UNIX boxes), but we are switching to Active Directory. This got us thinking about running arbitrary LDAP services on OBSD and falking out all the Windows 2K client boxes. Shades of Samba!
There is talk about switching our web and ftp server(s) to OBSD. We've already made the jump from Netscape to Apache (on Solaris), and IBM is *most* happy to supply us with OS-free Netfinity servers to run this stuff on. We still have a lot of value left in our Sparcs, but as they age it looks less and less like they will be replaced with newer hardware.
The main obvious benefit for me is that I get to tag on a t-shirt or two onto our corporate orders. I mean, having stable email is all well and good, but a new OBSD t-shirt every 6 months! That rings my bell.
I've sold my soul for this job. I've given up my rock 'n roll lifestyle (mostly), cut my hair (well, I was sick of long hair anyway) and made myself go to company functions (they aren't so bad). I've let corporate culture chisel away at my time and values, and in return I take an ever-increasing pile of filthy lucre, and zero job security.
But even I have my limits.
I draw the line at business casual. I will not wear golf shirts with company logos on them. I will not wear khakis. I will not wear a shirt and tie when a big customer is visiting the R&D department.
On hallowe'en, I will wear "business drag" (full suit and tie) for fun. Every year I will argue with someone that it is a costume and, as such, counts toward the money we raise for the food bank (for anyone who dresses up, the company donates money to a cause).
Biziz casual is my last bastion of free will, my line in the sand. I've sold my soul, but it will not be wearing a polo shirt. I don't have much self-respect left, but what little I have left, I guard jealously.
The classic text on the music-math connection is still being used to teach some technical theory classes: "On the Sensation of Tone" by Hermann Helmholtz. It's a fascinating (though dry) read if you enjoy reading about math.
When I was studying Computer Science, one of the things that really struck me was how similar some of the problem solving was between data structures and musical composition.
Of course, there are a lot of similarities between human languages and computer science, as well. These are Big subjects with a lot of different facets, so they are bound to overlap. That's what makes it fun!
I signed up with PC Financial, which is underwritten by CIBC, and appear to share some web space, as well.
About a year ago, I couldn't do anything with Mozilla/NS 6 on Linux or Mac. I sent a carefully worded email about supporting standards, as opposed to browsers, and a few months later the whole site was rewritten and presto! Mozilla just worked.
I didn't have too much trouble with the Bank of Montreal, either (though I did have to browser-spoof). This was one of the reasons I finally switched completely over to PC Financial from Mbanx.
Possibly Windows ME, as well, come to think of it. Though much maligned, ME did a fine job of being a basic, quick booting, win32 platform for your average user. And it had excellent power saving features out of the box.
I guess Linux did this well before Windows did. Even though it's a different chip, Macs also do the equivalent of a HLT.
I think the PowerPC chips have several speeds they can throttle down to. I think. Too lazy to check.
I suppose this why I'm dubious this research (as portrayed in the articles) is valid at all.
We have to allow for variation in human behaviour. Some folks like to really mix it up, and others are uncomfortable doing so, and everyone else is somewhere in between. Using a highly subjective thing like a change in "social skills" (how is this defined? how will that definition change as society changes?) to explain a sudden jump in an arbitrary statistic is a dangerous thing, indeed. As the saying goes, "coincidence does not equal causality". If they weren't talking about geeks, we'd call it "stereotyping".
The whole thing smacks of 1950's "learning to fit in" and "is your child well-adjusted" fears.
I'm sure many people who identify themselves as geeks, as well as highly educated "other-directed" folks share some common qualities. This is obviously so, or most of us wouldn't be here and Thinkgeek.com wouldn't exist.
However, for every single common quality, there are countless other individual variations that are not common among this demographic. Being uncomfortable in a social situation is one thing; having that behaviour associated with a medical condition is another. Not to mention that the studies referred to are hardly cross-cultural.
Measuring "behaviour" in Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley North (Southern Ontario) and using that to form a hypothesis about an arbitrary statistic like an increase in diagnosis of a condition is a weak argument.
The Globe and Mail (Saturday October 19, 2002) has a related article (with the title given in the subject line) in print and online.
They even have an "AQ" test to see where you are on the "autism spectrum".
I'm not sure I share the enthusiasm some of the quoted experts have for the idea that a number of talented people are having children with "good genes", which is causing this recent increase in autistic behaviour. Even assuming that exteme talent implies retarded social skills, I find it hard to believe that the basic talent it takes to write code, train users and invent documentation is extreme enough to warrant this kind of musing.
Add to that the skepticism I have for anything as complex as social interaction and family having a measurable genetic quality...
Heh. Actually, in all seriousness, the cheapware I've been using on OS X is pretty solid. This might just be my single experience and not the norm, but I do have a very low tolerance for crappy software.
What little native freeware that is out there for OS X is often well designed and efficient. There has been more than a few apps that have made me think, "WTF, this is such a cool app".
Makes me want to contribute, but I code for a living, and end up playing Warcraft or Unreal at home.
Heck, I've even bought software for the Mac, and I don't do that lightly, I'll tell you.
These are all really good points, but in rebuttal, all I can offer is an analogy:
Both Ford and VW make compact, 5-door cars. Both can get you to the store and back. They are considered in the same "class", as far as most people are concerned.
Do they market to the same people? Not really. VW commands a higher price in return for a real or perceived increase in certain intangibles. VW is not interested in selling a good number of their products to buyers who are primarily concerned with value. If price was the only or primary concern, nobody would be buying anything else but Fords.
From what I can see on the Apple web site, and their TV ads (lately) is that they have abandoned the customer where cost is the primary deciding factor on the matrix of comparators. They seem to be concentrating on the higher-end customer, someone who is willing to pay more for real or imagined benefits of running a Mac, and for the customer who is willing to "step up" from a basic machine, and is no longer so value-oriented.
Given this, it makes more sense to compare an Apple product with similar offerings from the less value-oriented manufacturers, like Sony.
Perhaps they are in the same market as your local clone shop, but they certainly do not have the same customers.
Of course, this is just anecdotal, but I know that I got rid of my home Windows machine partially because I was ready to drive something with a bit more style (by "style", I mean not the physical look of the box, but how the hardware, software and GUI all fit together). Another reason was that music production sucks on Windows 2000 (IMHO, and I tried my best), and XP was looking like a nonstarter for me. I spend a lot of time with computers at home and work. It had better be a bit more fun. I was less concerned with value this time around, and other attributes on the decision matrix were actually more important to me. I get the feeling that I'm not the only one.
I already have a Chevy truck running Linux, and an old Honda running my firewall. I wanted the VW or BMW.
My switch is only rated to 100mbit. That's all I meant. I don't know many places that have sprung for 1000mbit switches or routers. I don't know what they would cost for home use, but this means that my internal network is 100mbit/sec, maximum.
My only point was that, for most of us, the connection is as fast as your slowest link. The median right now seems 100mbit/sec.
Not sure what you mean. Macs come with an 10/100/1000 Mbit/sec ethernet adapter. I don't know anyone (yet) who owns a 1000 Mbit switch or router to connect it to.
My connection to the cable modem is 10Mbit, and I get 1-2 Mbit/sec from my provider, so it's all moot. I can't connect at 1000Mbit/sec to anywhere.
All I see is that they market themselves the same way that Sony, Compaq, et al. Apple is clearly not in the same market as your local clone company or the built-it-yourself-cheap-online sites.
An Acadian or Pony gets you to work and the grocery store just the same as a BMW or VW. Ford and VW both offer 5-door options that look the same, and are often placed in the same category.
They certainly sell to different markets, though.
Apple, like Sony, is busy making the buying experience seem like you are getting more for your money. Little things like well-designed cases, ultra-flexible cables, built-in wireless, tight integration with a variety of Firewire and USB devices all point toward a slightly upscale market.
The fact is most of us could make do with a $500 4-year old machine. Whether the actual matrix of differences are meaningful for you or not is a different thing. It's the perceived differences that are one of the hallmarks of marketing.
Slashdot Mirror
All n-complete languages will share certain similarities in how they handle discrete requirements. How the entire language is used to express solutions to problems will not be the same in all cases. This is probably what most of us respond to when we say we do or do not like a particular language for a given solution (or at all).
A more accurate test would be writing a solution that toggles a bunch of motors on, off and changes direction and speed in any arbitrary combination. Another good test is a word processor or desktop publishing app.
Is your solution expressed well in the language? Does it allow you to build upon previous work? Can you abstract the various small problems well enough to decompose them into small easily tested chunks?
One of the best parts of real-world FORTH is the ability to incrementally build your app, and to build unit-testing and full test-harnesses right into an application. Once the product is shipped, these can be left in (or not, depending on how you want it) with almost no impact on overall performance.
Note that I am not saying this cannot be done in other languages, only that FORTH makes it trivial to develop these handy tools right alongside your regular development activities.
The best Stupid Forth Trick I ever learned was changing the number based from octal, decimal or hex to an arbitrary number like 128 or 256 (decimal).
Every single printable ASCII character becomes a number. Any language that allows you to define cntrl-G as a valid number you can compute with has to be on a hackers list of all-time favourites.
Of course, changing it back again may be a bit of a challenge. For some reason, all my compiled words keep ending up on the stack...
FedEx delivered me a package. I hardly paid anything at all for the privilege.
Got to sign with that nutty stylus, too.
There is a text editor that allows you to write the macros in FORTH (as per Emacs/LISP). I don't recall the name or details.
Integrating such a beastie would be trivial in Mutt or Elm.
Most of the Forth SW vendors carry copies of "Thinking...". Ask on comp.lang.forth about the (very outdated) FAQ which has a lot of refs to vendors, or just Google for 'em.
It isn't doing the VPN proper right now, because we've invested too much in a commercial VPN. Also, most of our discrete host access to the VPN (over dialup or broadband) is Microsoft PPTP (which is lingua franca in terms of client access). We use NT exclusively for authentication/authorization (except for the NIS stuff on all our UNIX boxes), but we are switching to Active Directory. This got us thinking about running arbitrary LDAP services on OBSD and falking out all the Windows 2K client boxes. Shades of Samba!
There is talk about switching our web and ftp server(s) to OBSD. We've already made the jump from Netscape to Apache (on Solaris), and IBM is *most* happy to supply us with OS-free Netfinity servers to run this stuff on. We still have a lot of value left in our Sparcs, but as they age it looks less and less like they will be replaced with newer hardware.
The main obvious benefit for me is that I get to tag on a t-shirt or two onto our corporate orders. I mean, having stable email is all well and good, but a new OBSD t-shirt every 6 months! That rings my bell.
I've sold my soul for this job. I've given up my rock 'n roll lifestyle (mostly), cut my hair (well, I was sick of long hair anyway) and made myself go to company functions (they aren't so bad). I've let corporate culture chisel away at my time and values, and in return I take an ever-increasing pile of filthy lucre, and zero job security.
But even I have my limits.
I draw the line at business casual. I will not wear golf shirts with company logos on them. I will not wear khakis. I will not wear a shirt and tie when a big customer is visiting the R&D department.
On hallowe'en, I will wear "business drag" (full suit and tie) for fun. Every year I will argue with someone that it is a costume and, as such, counts toward the money we raise for the food bank (for anyone who dresses up, the company donates money to a cause).
Biziz casual is my last bastion of free will, my line in the sand. I've sold my soul, but it will not be wearing a polo shirt. I don't have much self-respect left, but what little I have left, I guard jealously.
Things would have been far far worse if he'd seen grub.
Bosses hate grub.
The classic text on the music-math connection is still being used to teach some technical theory classes: "On the Sensation of Tone" by Hermann Helmholtz. It's a fascinating (though dry) read if you enjoy reading about math.
When I was studying Computer Science, one of the things that really struck me was how similar some of the problem solving was between data structures and musical composition.
Of course, there are a lot of similarities between human languages and computer science, as well. These are Big subjects with a lot of different facets, so they are bound to overlap. That's what makes it fun!
I signed up with PC Financial, which is underwritten by CIBC, and appear to share some web space, as well.
About a year ago, I couldn't do anything with Mozilla/NS 6 on Linux or Mac. I sent a carefully worded email about supporting standards, as opposed to browsers, and a few months later the whole site was rewritten and presto! Mozilla just worked.
I didn't have too much trouble with the Bank of Montreal, either (though I did have to browser-spoof). This was one of the reasons I finally switched completely over to PC Financial from Mbanx.
Kerberos makes it really difficult to do any work at MIT. It's a software product designed by faculty to slow up research projects by students.
The reasons for this are twofold: ensure longer paths to tenure, and keep smart students from publishing too quickly and making their profs look bad.
I guess Linux did this well before Windows did. Even though it's a different chip, Macs also do the equivalent of a HLT.
I think the PowerPC chips have several speeds they can throttle down to. I think. Too lazy to check.
It's up to the OS to issue a HLT. Linux does this. AFAIK, Windows (any version) does not.
I suppose this why I'm dubious this research (as portrayed in the articles) is valid at all.
We have to allow for variation in human behaviour. Some folks like to really mix it up, and others are uncomfortable doing so, and everyone else is somewhere in between. Using a highly subjective thing like a change in "social skills" (how is this defined? how will that definition change as society changes?) to explain a sudden jump in an arbitrary statistic is a dangerous thing, indeed. As the saying goes, "coincidence does not equal causality". If they weren't talking about geeks, we'd call it "stereotyping".
The whole thing smacks of 1950's "learning to fit in" and "is your child well-adjusted" fears.
I'm sure many people who identify themselves as geeks, as well as highly educated "other-directed" folks share some common qualities. This is obviously so, or most of us wouldn't be here and Thinkgeek.com wouldn't exist.
However, for every single common quality, there are countless other individual variations that are not common among this demographic. Being uncomfortable in a social situation is one thing; having that behaviour associated with a medical condition is another. Not to mention that the studies referred to are hardly cross-cultural.
Measuring "behaviour" in Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley North (Southern Ontario) and using that to form a hypothesis about an arbitrary statistic like an increase in diagnosis of a condition is a weak argument.
[Gets off soapbox]
The Globe and Mail (Saturday October 19, 2002) has a related article (with the title given in the subject line) in print and online.
They even have an "AQ" test to see where you are on the "autism spectrum".
I'm not sure I share the enthusiasm some of the quoted experts have for the idea that a number of talented people are having children with "good genes", which is causing this recent increase in autistic behaviour. Even assuming that exteme talent implies retarded social skills, I find it hard to believe that the basic talent it takes to write code, train users and invent documentation is extreme enough to warrant this kind of musing.
Add to that the skepticism I have for anything as complex as social interaction and family having a measurable genetic quality...
Good read nonetheless.
Sorry, don't know who "H.W." is. Oh look, I've lost interest in this thread....
Heh. Actually, in all seriousness, the cheapware I've been using on OS X is pretty solid. This might just be my single experience and not the norm, but I do have a very low tolerance for crappy software.
What little native freeware that is out there for OS X is often well designed and efficient. There has been more than a few apps that have made me think, "WTF, this is such a cool app".
Makes me want to contribute, but I code for a living, and end up playing Warcraft or Unreal at home.
Heck, I've even bought software for the Mac, and I don't do that lightly, I'll tell you.
That's because you are a trolling AC. Duh.
These are all really good points, but in rebuttal, all I can offer is an analogy:
Both Ford and VW make compact, 5-door cars. Both can get you to the store and back. They are considered in the same "class", as far as most people are concerned.
Do they market to the same people? Not really. VW commands a higher price in return for a real or perceived increase in certain intangibles. VW is not interested in selling a good number of their products to buyers who are primarily concerned with value. If price was the only or primary concern, nobody would be buying anything else but Fords.
From what I can see on the Apple web site, and their TV ads (lately) is that they have abandoned the customer where cost is the primary deciding factor on the matrix of comparators. They seem to be concentrating on the higher-end customer, someone who is willing to pay more for real or imagined benefits of running a Mac, and for the customer who is willing to "step up" from a basic machine, and is no longer so value-oriented.
Given this, it makes more sense to compare an Apple product with similar offerings from the less value-oriented manufacturers, like Sony.
Perhaps they are in the same market as your local clone shop, but they certainly do not have the same customers.
Of course, this is just anecdotal, but I know that I got rid of my home Windows machine partially because I was ready to drive something with a bit more style (by "style", I mean not the physical look of the box, but how the hardware, software and GUI all fit together). Another reason was that music production sucks on Windows 2000 (IMHO, and I tried my best), and XP was looking like a nonstarter for me. I spend a lot of time with computers at home and work. It had better be a bit more fun. I was less concerned with value this time around, and other attributes on the decision matrix were actually more important to me. I get the feeling that I'm not the only one.
I already have a Chevy truck running Linux, and an old Honda running my firewall. I wanted the VW or BMW.
My switch is only rated to 100mbit. That's all I meant. I don't know many places that have sprung for 1000mbit switches or routers. I don't know what they would cost for home use, but this means that my internal network is 100mbit/sec, maximum.
My only point was that, for most of us, the connection is as fast as your slowest link. The median right now seems 100mbit/sec.
Well, AC, you don't have a name, so there's nothing to apply a bad name to!
Lucky you!
I have to say it again: you trolling AC's make the rest of us look so darn smart. Thanks. Thanks so much.
Not sure what you mean. Macs come with an 10/100/1000 Mbit/sec ethernet adapter. I don't know anyone (yet) who owns a 1000 Mbit switch or router to connect it to.
My connection to the cable modem is 10Mbit, and I get 1-2 Mbit/sec from my provider, so it's all moot. I can't connect at 1000Mbit/sec to anywhere.
That's all I meant.
All I see is that they market themselves the same way that Sony, Compaq, et al. Apple is clearly not in the same market as your local clone company or the built-it-yourself-cheap-online sites.
An Acadian or Pony gets you to work and the grocery store just the same as a BMW or VW. Ford and VW both offer 5-door options that look the same, and are often placed in the same category.
They certainly sell to different markets, though.
Apple, like Sony, is busy making the buying experience seem like you are getting more for your money. Little things like well-designed cases, ultra-flexible cables, built-in wireless, tight integration with a variety of Firewire and USB devices all point toward a slightly upscale market.
The fact is most of us could make do with a $500 4-year old machine. Whether the actual matrix of differences are meaningful for you or not is a different thing. It's the perceived differences that are one of the hallmarks of marketing.