As a graduate compsci student being also a teaching assistant for classes on programming language, I think that's a really bad idea.
People need to abstract from the computer hardware to develop means of reasonning, creating abstractions, solving interesting problems and writing understandable programs.
Introducing someone to computers by learning him assembly won't help their development at all. Low level development is tedious, it is not something that should be used to teach people how to reason about programming.
Also, how many people writes assembly in their day job? The only assembly I produce comes out of my compiler's code generator. I'm not stupid enough to go write it myself.
Definitively, assembly has its use, but it is not for teaching basics of programming. Using it with that goal in head is a very bad case of premature optimization.
Yeah, of course. I agree with what you say. I was just (maybe unclearly) pointing out the fact that being rich helps a lot to get richer, and he had the chance to have a headstart into that.
Of course he worked hard and did a lot of things right. I don't believe in "fate" or "destiny", I don't think essence precedes existence.
Bill Gates parent were millionnaires (so were his grandparents) and his mother was sitting on a board where a IBM exec was too, so Billy got a preferential treatment... The rest is history.
If being born to millionaires parents with great contacts isn't luck, I don't know what qualifies.
Maybe it's possible that Microsoft will somewhat partially involves itself in a potential business relation that would certainly prove to be something undeterminate with uncertain effect on search engines and potentially the internet.
5 times the speed of sound is just about 0.0005% of the speed of light. That's not a conslusive test, it's like doing a car crash test at a speed of around 5 millimeters per hour.
I hope they realize they still have a *lot* of work to do.
Even though sometimes you may think individual actions don't have much impact, that's wrong. Every gesture count. Yours even more because of your privileged position.
Gift idea: give a copy of OpenOffice.org to your boss tomorrow.
Yeah, I'll just burn the web site on a cdrom.
Great for GC and dynamically typed languages
on
Athlon 64 Debuts
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
64 bits words have an advantage I would not have realized before programming compilers for dynamically-typed languages:
In a DT language , you need some way to 'mark' information to say wether it is a number, a pointer, etc. The usual technique is to mark the bit field with a 1 or 2 bit tag at the end.
Also, for garbage collection (ie Mark-And-Sweep) you need to be able to 'mark' the object that needs to stay alive so they are not reclaimed by the gc.
That being said, taking 2 or 3 bits on a 32 bit field is a lot, but it is very interesting to realize that that cost go away on a 64 bit machine.
So, 64 bits = more memory (larger address space) but it also means some techniques becomes much more viable in terms of feasability of implementation, which is a very exciting (for some loose definition of exciting) prospect!
Quality, because you want something that works. Usefulness, because else there is no use to the code. Progress, because you want the project to evolve constantly. Maintenance, because you don't want to use software that has a buggy, unmaintained codebase.
Slashdot Mirror
As a graduate compsci student being also a teaching assistant for classes on programming language, I think that's a really bad idea.
People need to abstract from the computer hardware to develop means of reasonning, creating abstractions, solving interesting problems and writing understandable programs.
Introducing someone to computers by learning him assembly won't help their development at all. Low level development is tedious, it is not something that should be used to teach people how to reason about programming.
Also, how many people writes assembly in their day job? The only assembly I produce comes out of my compiler's code generator. I'm not stupid enough to go write it myself.
Definitively, assembly has its use, but it is not for teaching basics of programming. Using it with that goal in head is a very bad case of premature optimization.
Cool and useless... signs of a Nice Hack(tm)!
"Duff's Device" isn't that bad, I actually find it somewhat beautiful. But I agree it's a nice puzzle the first time you see it.
Yeah, of course. I agree with what you say. I was just (maybe unclearly) pointing out the fact that being rich helps a lot to get richer, and he had the chance to have a headstart into that.
Of course he worked hard and did a lot of things right. I don't believe in "fate" or "destiny", I don't think essence precedes existence.
Bill Gates parent were millionnaires (so were his grandparents) and his mother was sitting on a board where a IBM exec was too, so Billy got a preferential treatment... The rest is history.
If being born to millionaires parents with great contacts isn't luck, I don't know what qualifies.
From the article:
[...] you'll likely end up in a position where you need to know your way around a Makefile.
Well duh. What a surprise: compiling for a different platform might requires Makefile tweaking.
Am I the only one to think that was a dummy article wasting a spot for much more interesting articles about 64 bit computing?
That has to be the most stupidest compiler test I've ever read.
And it's not the number of bits that is important: it's the size of them.
> Having read the book, taken the ScrumMaster course and implemented Scrum in my organization [...]
Of course you beg to differ.
The higher the investment you made in learning something the harder you'll vouch for it, wether it's good or not.
``Projects promoting programming in "natural language" are intrinsically doomed to fail.''
How do we tell truths that might hurt?
A true classic.
Maybe it's possible that Microsoft will somewhat partially involves itself in a potential business
relation that would certainly prove to be something undeterminate with uncertain effect on
search engines and potentially the internet.
I'm not sure, though.
Wow, what a 31337 name.
/sarcasm
5 times the speed of sound is just about 0.0005% of the speed of light. That's not a conslusive test, it's like doing a car crash test at a speed of around 5 millimeters per hour.
I hope they realize they still have a *lot* of work to do.
For those who can't get that link because it is a .doc document (what a shame on /. front page), you can still use OpenOffice.org to read it.
C# still sucks...
That language is even more vendor-tied than Java, and it's already bad enough there.
What's that?
even though it means nothing.
bzzzt! wrong!
Even though sometimes you may think individual actions don't have much impact, that's wrong. Every gesture count. Yours even more because of your privileged position.
Please join the voices of the Free world.
Yeah, I was talking about the Neon crap.
Chicks digs boxes with neon lighting... (not!)
...our cases glow with colorful lights...
Mine doesn't, you dork.
Who the fuck has enough time on their hands to put damn *colored lights* in their PC?
Gift idea: give a copy of OpenOffice.org to your boss tomorrow.
Yeah, I'll just burn the web site on a cdrom.
64 bits words have an advantage I would not have realized before programming compilers for dynamically-typed languages:
In a DT language , you need some way to 'mark' information to say wether it is a number, a pointer, etc. The usual technique is to mark the bit field with a 1 or 2 bit tag at the end.
Also, for garbage collection (ie Mark-And-Sweep) you need to be able to 'mark' the object that needs to stay alive so they are not reclaimed by the gc.
That being said, taking 2 or 3 bits on a 32 bit field is a lot, but it is very interesting to realize that that cost go away on a 64 bit machine.
So, 64 bits = more memory (larger address space) but it also means some techniques becomes much more viable in terms of feasability of implementation, which is a very exciting (for some loose definition of exciting) prospect!
And also it sucks to work with.
I still can't understand why people invest so much time and money into that half-assed idea that is XML.
Better alternatives have existed for a long time.
Fly away on a fluffy, comfy cloud (use Lisp).
Quality, Usefulness, Progress, Maintenance.
Quality, because you want something that works. Usefulness, because else there is no use to the code. Progress, because you want the project to evolve constantly. Maintenance, because you don't want to use software that has a buggy, unmaintained codebase.
Look at The Onion! They are also pulling a "all news are bogus" day. Man, where am I supposed to get informed today then?
I guess I'll have to rely on good old trusted news from fark or bbspot.
What about the scenario where a poor misguided soul use vendor-specific features, not adding anything to performance and yet losing portability?
That's a problem too with vendor-specific features, they can easily be misused in many ways.
btw I mostly agree with you, just adding my 2 bits.