> > Also note that Forth is dead...completely...Black Box. No > > compilers, no users. Oh.
> Help! WiRED came out and I can't reboot my computer!
Well that's what you get for using one of them funny computers that boots with FORTH (you know, like a Sun, or an Apple, or an IBM RS/6000, or ...), instead of a *real* computer like an Intel x86 that boots a 16-bit processor with segmented memory. Can't trust them damned FORTH based booters -- gimme 16-bit 80286 machine code anyday! It's *so* much easier to read! And it's not backwards, unless you use the AT&T assembler...
> > On the other hand, Self 4.0 is going gangbusters. More news.
> Self? Never heard of it!
You're just out of the loop. That's what you get for using a recursive language.
> > Objective-C didn't have any credit from Smalltalk (the dead and dying > > Smalltalk, but don't tell that to the Squeak community). It would be > > interesting to see where Obj-C would have been two years ago, before Apple > > release OS X.
> Oh, back then it was related to Smalltalk. Just not anymore. :-)
"In other news, Apple today announced it would rewrite not only the future, but the past as well. An ad campaign similar to the 1984 Macintosh campaign is currently in the works..."
> (PS: I like Perl (not as much as Lisp), I like Larry, I'm not bashing > anything but this article. Please don't start a bash session or holy > war off of this.)
Damn, does this mean I have to kill my running shell then? I guess I could nohup XEmacs and try to reconnect to it...
> > So, anyway, this chart is a wonder of knowledge and research.
> You mean, you wonder where the knowledge and research are?
No, the knowledge and the research put into it are really a wonder....
'james
-- James A. Crippen <ja...@unlambda.com> ,-./-. Anchorage, Alaska, Lambda Unlimited: Recursion 'R' Us | |/ | USA, 61.20939N, -149.767W Y = \f.(\x.f(xx)) (\x.f(xx)) | |\ | Earth, Sol System, Y(F) = F(Y(F)) \_,-_/ Milky Way.
Lyle McKennot <s...@spam.menot.com> writes: > >Note that Scheme is not related to Lisp at all, not even > >influenced. No little branches from Lisp to Scheme. Scheme is a > >descendant of Algol.
> Everything is. > Except Fortan and Lisp.
And COBOL.
Oh, and JCL too. And APL. Hmm... RPG-IV maybe?
(Truth is there's a large contingent of non-Algol related languages, but nobody seems to program in them as much anymore. Pascal did too many language designers in.)
> >Also note that Forth is dead...completely.
> Well, any movement you see is just the maggots on the dead corpse.
That just made me yarf. Wow.
> Actually, he is a christian of sorts and might even be one of those > charismatics who speaks in tongues....
Oh, so *that's* why I can't read Perl? Or were you only referring to the regular expression pattern matching part?
'james
-- James A. Crippen <ja...@unlambda.com> ,-./-. Anchorage, Alaska, Lambda Unlimited: Recursion 'R' Us | |/ | USA, 61.20939N, -149.767W Y = \f.(\x.f(xx)) (\x.f(xx)) | |\ | Earth, Sol System, Y(F) = F(Y(F)) \_,-_/ Milky Way.
>(Truth is there's a large contingent of non-Algol related languages, >but nobody seems to program in them as much anymore. Pascal did too >many language designers in.)
They didn't call him Wirth the Assassin for nothing. His favorite weapon was a sharpened type declaration.
>> Actually, he is a christian of sorts and might even be one of those >> charismatics who speaks in tongues....
>Oh, so *that's* why I can't read Perl?
You need to be "born again" and talk in tongues to be able to Perl righteously.
Mike Smith <michaeljsm...@comcast.net> writes: >> Where are the flying cars?!?! Look at this link for an explaination of why >> we have no flying cars!
When I visited these guys in 87 they pointed at two problems that I remember off the top of my head:
a) Engines. They needed highly efficient, low-weight engines. He showed us some of the engines they were working on and sounded pretty confident that they were solving this problem. Maybe they had "good enough" egines even then (I don't remember).
b) Requiring a pilots licence to "drive" them would severly limit their market.
There's been som talk about collision avoidance systems, designating "lanes" (or rather altitudes) in the sky for densely popluated areas etc. I'm not sure how far things have progressed here.
The first problem is technical and can be solved by engineers. The problem is just to get the price down enough for "most people" to buy. Part of getting the price down is making them cheaper to build and run, but another part is (usually at least ;-)) increasing the market.
And to do that, b) might be something they need to address. Maybe even by getting a system with cheaper "skycar" pilot licenses.
Apart from that they probably also have some interesting problems if they want to get the skycar approved both as a vehicle for driving on the road, and as a flying vehicle that you can land even in densely populated neighbourhoods (which I believe is not permitted for ordinary planes, even in the USA).
In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if they actually have the most challenging problems with regulations, not with the technology. And regulations take time.
I hope they manage it soon. I've always wanted one of those ;-)
* "Will Hartung" <wi...@msoft.com> | Accoring to this thing, Erik has been vindicated. Note that Scheme is | not related to Lisp at all, not even influenced. No little branches from | Lisp to Scheme. Scheme is a descendant of Algol.
Yes! :D -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
70 percent of American adults do not understand the scientific process.
> Well that's what you get for using one of them funny computers that > boots with FORTH (you know, like a Sun, or an Apple, or an IBM > RS/6000, or ...), instead of a *real* computer like an Intel x86 that > boots a 16-bit processor with segmented memory. Can't trust them > damned FORTH based booters -- gimme 16-bit 80286 machine code anyday! > It's *so* much easier to read! And it's not backwards, unless you use > the AT&T assembler...
The FreeBSD bootloader utilises Forth as well. :)
> > You mean, you wonder where the knowledge and research are?
> No, the knowledge and the research put into it are really a wonder....
I really would like to see this chart, but I currently have no access to foreign print media. :-|
Lyle McKennot <s...@spam.menot.com> writes: > >Note that Scheme is not > >related to Lisp at all, not even influenced. No little branches from Lisp to > >Scheme. Scheme is a descendant of Algol.
> Everything is. > Except Fortan and Lisp.
I recently enjoyed a tutorial dealing with FORTRAN-77 and -90 and it looked a lot like all those ALGOL-related languages. It reminded me especially of PASCAL somehow.
> > >Note that Scheme is not > > >related to Lisp at all, not even influenced. No little branches from Lisp to > > >Scheme. Scheme is a descendant of Algol.
> > Everything is. > > Except Fortan and Lisp.
> I recently enjoyed a tutorial dealing with FORTRAN-77 and -90 and it > looked a lot like all those ALGOL-related languages. It reminded me > especially of PASCAL somehow.
F90 got a big injection of Algol. But F77 tried hard to stay pure. But a few Algol-type constructs snuck in. Not many, and nobody seemed to want to use them instead of computed goto.
For fun, try reading the ADVENT source someday. It's nightmarish.
'james
-- James A. Crippen <ja...@unlambda.com> ,-./-. Anchorage, Alaska, Lambda Unlimited: Recursion 'R' Us | |/ | USA, 61.20939N, -149.767W Y = \f.(\x.f(xx)) (\x.f(xx)) | |\ | Earth, Sol System, Y(F) = F(Y(F)) \_,-_/ Milky Way.
> Will Hartung wrote: > > Accoring to this thing, Erik has been vindicated. Note that Scheme is not > > related to Lisp at all, not even influenced. No little branches from Lisp to > > Scheme.
> Check again, at mid-1972.
Aaiiee!!
Yes, you're right Kenny. There is a connection from Lisp to Scheme, and also from Smalltalk to Objective-C. It took a careful study for me to find them, however.
I need to get these glasses fixed.
Oh, wait...I'm not wearing glasses.
This will be crushing news to Erik, however. I don't know if he can bear it.
* "Will Hartung" <wi...@msoft.com> | This will be crushing news to Erik, however. I don't know if he can bear it.
I think denial has been underrated as a coping technique. There is no link. -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
70 percent of American adults do not understand the scientific process.
> * "Will Hartung" <wi...@msoft.com> > | This will be crushing news to Erik, however. I don't know if he can bear it.
> I think denial has been underrated as a coping technique. There is no link.
Still no link, but check the NY Times archive, Science Times, going back 10-15 years or so. Study showed that the survivors of an atrocity happiest decades later were those who moved on and never looked back. Those who dwelt on the experience turned out the worst.
Just say "yes" to denial?
--
kenny tilton clinisys, inc --------------------------------------------------------------- ""Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it."" Elwood P. Dowd
* Kenny Tilton | Still no link, but check the NY Times archive, Science Times, going back | 10-15 years or so. Study showed that the survivors of an atrocity | happiest decades later were those who moved on and never looked back. | Those who dwelt on the experience turned out the worst.
Kenny, with all due respect, we have our own archive of "atrocities" in this newsgroup. Those who get over things, turn out the best, and those who dwell on the experience and downright refuse to let go, turn out the worst, often going to pieces in public most disgracefully. Don't need no stinkin' study to grasp this, hence my frequent requet for people to just get over it. My stance is: So Scheme happened. Please refrain from reminding me. (I get pissed off when people remind me too much, though. I recall a brilliant retort to a whining loser who clamored for someone's opinion on him. "But what do you think of me?" "I don't think of you.")
(Incidentally, denial is a form of not coping with something. It is very different from actually coping well with something. Leting bygones be bygones is not denial, it is the healthiest and most mature reaction you can have to anything that happens to you: You can _not_ chnage the past, but you can learn from it and turn whatever happened into an asset. If you can only build on "luck", and not build on setbacks or adversity, you are not in control of your life or your destiny -- whatever constitutes "luck" is. A certain U.S. president would do well to figure out, using his meager intellectual prowess, what it means to deal _rationally_ with a disaster, before he takes the whole Western world wih him into his permanent victim mode and goes just as bananas about irrational revenge as a few tribes in the Middle East, who also cannot get over _anything_. I mean, now we know what happened to an an emotional doofus like Anakin, right? The path to the Dark Side is paved with bad retentions.)
In a flash of on-topicness, I realized that Common Lisp community is fraught with people who cannot let go of certain design decisions. The most annoying failure to get over an arbitrary decision is the case of symbols. The addition of the loop macro is another regretted decision. Some have serious coping problems with the numeric contagion rules. It seems to me that if someone needs an excuse not to use Common Lisp, the best place to go look for ammunition is the Common Lisp community itself: I know of no other community where so many people still remain in the community after being so unhappy with some design choice that they cannot get over it and therefore seize any opportunity to denounce the whole language for its "failure" to do their bidding -- while still using it, or at least not quitting the community fair and square. Re Scheme, it is an unfortunate fact that a few misguided people discarded the wisdom of much smarter people and regressed to a single namespace, but if you want that kind of braindamage, you know where to get it -- there is no need to carp on the decision made by Common Lisp to support _intelligent_ and _human_ programmers as if you could possibly change anything by being a resilient whiner. -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
70 percent of American adults do not understand the scientific process.
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > Re Scheme, it is an unfortunate fact that a few misguided people > discarded the wisdom of much smarter people and regressed to a > single namespace, but if you want that kind of braindamage, you > know where to get it
Let the flames torture my ignorant soul, but why is a single namespace braindamaged? (I ask this out of genuine curiosity.)
In article <3D0E9B9E.3BBC2...@nyc.rr.com>, Kenny Tilton <ktil...@nyc.rr.com> writes:
>Study showed that the survivors of an atrocity >happiest decades later were those who moved on and never looked back. >Those who dwelt on the experience turned out the worst.
Correlation is not causation. I suspect that those most prone to be happy are also most prone to let the past fade into the background.
-- Attaining and helping others attain "Aha!" experiences, as satisfying as attaining and helping others attain orgasms.
* Lars Brinkhoff | Let the flames torture my ignorant soul, but why is a single namespace | braindamaged? (I ask this out of genuine curiosity.)
People invent Hungarian notation to deal with the multiple meanings of homographs in single-namespace languages. There's your evidence that not only do we intelligent humans already manage to deal with homographs and homonyms and homophones just fine, context is a Good Thing. (Coarse- grained context is also much better than fine-grained context simply because there is room for fewer coarse-grained ones.)
Consider the names people would have if they had to have globally unique names. That is what a single namespace does to programmers. Add a perverse limitation to the number of letters there can be in a name, too, and you have basically reinvented languages like C. And of course you need _case_ to distinguish a stream from Stream from a STREAM.
So much evil follows from the decision to have one namespace that it is hard to imagine that it can be the single source. People will look to the nearest evil and denounce it while they happily employ another, rather than rid themselves of the greatest evil: The one namespace to rule them all. -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.
70 percent of American adults do not understand the scientific process.
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > So much evil follows from the decision to have one namespace that it is > hard to imagine that it can be the single source. People will look to > the nearest evil and denounce it while they happily employ another, > rather than rid themselves of the greatest evil: The one namespace to > rule them all.
You asked for it.
One Namespace to rule them all, One Namespace to find them, One Namespace to close them all and in the Darkness bind them, In the land of Lisp-1 where the Shadows lie.
'james
-- James A. Crippen <ja...@unlambda.com> ,-./-. Anchorage, Alaska, Lambda Unlimited: Recursion 'R' Us | |/ | USA, 61.20939N, -149.767W Y = \f.(\x.f(xx)) (\x.f(xx)) | |\ | Earth, Sol System, Y(F) = F(Y(F)) \_,-_/ Milky Way.
> > So much evil follows from the decision to have one namespace that it is > > hard to imagine that it can be the single source. People will look to > > the nearest evil and denounce it while they happily employ another, > > rather than rid themselves of the greatest evil: The one namespace to > > rule them all.
> You asked for it.
> One Namespace to rule them all, One Namespace to find them, > One Namespace to close them all and in the Darkness bind them, > In the land of Lisp-1 where the Shadows lie.
Ah, yes, the One Ring that corrupts all who wear it, which has to be destroyed in order for middle-earth to survive...
-- Duane Rettig Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/ (www) 1995 University Ave Suite 275 Berkeley, CA 94704 Phone: (510) 548-3600; FAX: (510) 548-8253 du...@Franz.COM (internet)
>> The July issue of WiRED Magazine has a cool two page spread on the >> history of programming languages.
>> The only problem: they have Lisp and Smalltalk >> listed as "endangered species" :-(
> Hey, we're just happy to be remembered! Now let's see who goes to whose > funeral, Lisp or Wired.
Yes, I'd have been interested to see what Wired thought a couple of years back about the longevity of, say, Visual Cafe vs. VisualWorks.
Remember, the standard of journalism is two independent sources constitues confirmation. So if you asked three friends who work with computers, you've more than confirmed your story.
In article <3233361124321...@naggum.net>, Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> wrote:
> I get pissed off when people remind me too much, though. > I recall a brilliant retort to a whining loser who clamored for someone's > opinion on him. "But what do you think of me?" "I don't think of you."
That's an exchange in Casablanca, between Rick and the soon to be late Ugarte. But I'm sure that's not the first or last time it's been said.
> In article <3233361124321...@naggum.net>, Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> > wrote:
> > I get pissed off when people remind me too much, though. > > I recall a brilliant retort to a whining loser who clamored for someone's > > opinion on him. "But what do you think of me?" "I don't think of you."
> That's an exchange in Casablanca, between Rick and the soon to be late > Ugarte. But I'm sure that's not the first or last time it's been said.
Sure, they had to have rehersals for the scene, and now, we have Erik. I'd say all of your assertions are pretty well satisfied.
> >> The July issue of WiRED Magazine has a cool two page spread on the > >> history of programming languages.
> >> The only problem: they have Lisp and Smalltalk > >> listed as "endangered species" :-(
> > Hey, we're just happy to be remembered! Now let's see who goes to whose > > funeral, Lisp or Wired.
> Yes, I'd have been interested to see what Wired thought a couple of years > back about the longevity of, say, Visual Cafe vs. VisualWorks.
> Remember, the standard of journalism is two independent sources constitues > confirmation. So if you asked three friends who work with computers, you've > more than confirmed your story.
WiRED magazine contains a lot of dubious "futurist" speculation, but remember that they also distribute industry news. In this particular situation, it strikes me as cold comfort to tell ourselves that their standard of journalism is inadequate, biased, or that stories that appear in most news venues do not "reflect reality".
It's sort of a commonplace now that we live in a world ruled by fictions -- mass-merchandizing, product branding, advertising, hype, spin, PR, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, etc. Pointing out that journalism is another one of these fictions does not change the fact that people will tend to believe what they read, see, and hear in the news media.
So, WiRED may have a dubious profile, but they have a formula of mixing business/industry news and high-flown speculation that evidently appeals to a large audience. WiRED has a circulation of 500,000 copies. Their magazine is filled with high dollar advertising from the IT business. A lot of people who have never heard of Smalltalk (and probably never will) are reading their magazine, and stories like these are either forming or otherwise inflecting their opinion about the history of programming languages.
Fact is, they printed a story that put Smalltalk on the endangered-species list.
Smalltalkers can scoff at WiRED in one thread on our community news group, but what seems more important to me is to get our story into the same distribution. If VisualWorks has indeed outlived Visual Cafe, where's the story in a high-profile publication with a circulation of 500,000 and top-dollar advertising that makes hay of this fact?
Bruce Hoult <br...@hoult.org> writes: > In article <3233361124321...@naggum.net>, Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> > wrote:
> > I get pissed off when people remind me too much, though. > > I recall a brilliant retort to a whining loser who clamored for someone's > > opinion on him. "But what do you think of me?" "I don't think of you."
> That's an exchange in Casablanca, between Rick and the soon to be late > Ugarte. But I'm sure that's not the first or last time it's been said.
I thought the line was "you despise me, don't you Rick" "I would if I gave you any thought"
> In article <3233361124321...@naggum.net>, Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> > wrote:
> > I get pissed off when people remind me too much, though. > > I recall a brilliant retort to a whining loser who clamored for someone's > > opinion on him. "But what do you think of me?" "I don't think of you."
> That's an exchange in Casablanca, between Rick and the soon to be late > Ugarte. But I'm sure that's not the first or last time it's been said.
Minor nitpick. It's close, but the exchange in Casablanca is:
"You despise me, don't you?" "Well, if I gave you any thought I probably would."
