You know you've been Lisp hacking to long when
Ryan McCoskrie
Yes this has happened to me, hope nobody minds that I bought
it up.
--
Quote of the login:
[We] use bad software and bad machines for the wrong things. -- R.W. Hamming
Charles Richmond
> ... You dream that the parenthesis are trying to drown you.
> Yes this has happened to me, hope nobody minds that I bought
> it up.
>
The plural is "parentheses"...
--
+----------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond |
| |
| plano dot net at aquaporin4 dot com |
+----------------------------------------+
jmfbahciv
> Ryan McCoskrie wrote:
>> ... You dream that the parenthesis are trying to drown you.
>> Yes this has happened to me, hope nobody minds that I bought
>> it up.
>>
>
> The plural is "parentheses"...
>
close it.
/BAH
Charles Richmond
I read the OP as meaning multiple parentheses, because in LISP one
is often presented with an overabundance of those glyphs. I can
see how that could haunt one's dreams.
I knew of a graduate student in math that had a similar dream the
night before his aural defense of his master's thesis. He dreamed
that he was extremely sick with flu symptoms. He went to the
toilet and threw up, except all his vomit was composed of
*equations*!!! I guess when you jam too much of anything in your
head, it has to come out somewhere... :-)
jmfbahciv
> jmfbahciv wrote:
>> Charles Richmond wrote:
>>> Ryan McCoskrie wrote:
>>>> ... You dream that the parenthesis are trying to drown you.
>>>> Yes this has happened to me, hope nobody minds that I bought
>>>> it up.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The plural is "parentheses"...
>>>
>> I read his blurb as one; you can drown if you don't
>> close it.
>>
>
> I read the OP as meaning multiple parentheses, because in LISP one is
> often presented with an overabundance of those glyphs. I can see how
> that could haunt one's dreams.
>
> I knew of a graduate student in math that had a similar dream the night
> before his aural defense of his master's thesis. He dreamed that he was
> extremely sick with flu symptoms. He went to the toilet and threw up,
> except all his vomit was composed of *equations*!!! I guess when you jam
> too much of anything in your head, it has to come out somewhere... :-)
>
balancing his checkbook in octal after a 2-month session in machine
language.
/BAH
Roland Hutchinson
Doesn't everyone balance their checkbook in octal?
--
Roland Hutchinson
He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
--Newark (NJ) Star Ledger ( http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ )
Mensanator
wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:29:19 -0500, jmfbahciv wrote:
> > Charles Richmond wrote:
> >> jmfbahciv wrote:
> >>> Charles Richmond wrote:
> >>>> Ryan McCoskrie wrote:
> >>>>> ... You dream that the parenthesis are trying to drown you. Yes this
> >>>>> has happened to me, hope nobody minds that I bought it up.
>
> >>>> The plural is "parentheses"...
>
> >>> I read his blurb as one; you can drown if you don't close it.
>
> >> I read the OP as meaning multiple parentheses, because in LISP one is
> >> often presented with an overabundance of those glyphs. I can see how
> >> that could haunt one's dreams.
>
> >> I knew of a graduate student in math that had a similar dream the night
> >> before his aural defense of his master's thesis. He dreamed that he was
> >> extremely sick with flu symptoms. He went to the toilet and threw up,
> >> except all his vomit was composed of *equations*!!! I guess when you
> >> jam too much of anything in your head, it has to come out somewhere...
> >> �:-)
>
> > Yep :-). �Vomiting equations is a good one. �I know a guy who started
> > balancing his checkbook in octal after a 2-month session in machine
> > language.
>
> Doesn't everyone balance their checkbook in octal?
Certainly, makes it seem I have more money than
I actually do.
>
> --
> Roland Hutchinson � � � � � � �
>
> He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
> ... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
> --Newark (NJ) Star Ledger �(http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ)- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Morten Reistad
Roland Hutchinson <my.sp...@verizon.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:29:19 -0500, jmfbahciv wrote:
>
>> Charles Richmond wrote:
>>> jmfbahciv wrote:
>>>> Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>>> Ryan McCoskrie wrote:
>>>
>> Yep :-). Vomiting equations is a good one. I know a guy who started
>> balancing his checkbook in octal after a 2-month session in machine
>> language.
>
>Doesn't everyone balance their checkbook in octal?
No. After a harrowing night of debugging some realtime routine
where we had to follow an octal counter until the screen blanked
and everything went away, we finally found the single instruction
that was at fault (linkage error ISTR) and went home. While filling
gas I had a mental jump with "there are extra symbols in this counter".
They were between 7 and 0.
-- mrr
Phil Stovell
I've upgraded to hexadecimal. It makes me only 38 years old.
jmfbahciv
> On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:29:19 -0500, jmfbahciv wrote:
>
>> Charles Richmond wrote:
>>> jmfbahciv wrote:
>>>> Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>>> Ryan McCoskrie wrote:
>>>>>> ... You dream that the parenthesis are trying to drown you. Yes this
>>>>>> has happened to me, hope nobody minds that I bought it up.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> The plural is "parentheses"...
>>>>>
>>>> I read his blurb as one; you can drown if you don't close it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I read the OP as meaning multiple parentheses, because in LISP one is
>>> often presented with an overabundance of those glyphs. I can see how
>>> that could haunt one's dreams.
>>>
>>> I knew of a graduate student in math that had a similar dream the night
>>> before his aural defense of his master's thesis. He dreamed that he was
>>> extremely sick with flu symptoms. He went to the toilet and threw up,
>>> except all his vomit was composed of *equations*!!! I guess when you
>>> jam too much of anything in your head, it has to come out somewhere...
>>> :-)
>>>
>> Yep :-). Vomiting equations is a good one. I know a guy who started
>> balancing his checkbook in octal after a 2-month session in machine
>> language.
>
> Doesn't everyone balance their checkbook in octal?
>
checks using octal.
/BAH
jmfbahciv
<grin> A lot of forms you fill out will produce an invalid
data error. BFD would be a nice age.
/BAH
Charlie Gibbs
my.sp...@verizon.net (Roland Hutchinson) writes:
> On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:29:19 -0500, jmfbahciv wrote:
>
>> Charles Richmond wrote:
>>
>>> I knew of a graduate student in math that had a similar dream the
>>> night before his aural defense of his master's thesis. He dreamed
>>> that he was extremely sick with flu symptoms. He went to the toilet
>>> and threw up, except all his vomit was composed of *equations*!!!
>>> I guess when you jam too much of anything in your head, it has to
>>> come somewhere...
>>> :-)
>>
>> Yep :-). Vomiting equations is a good one. I know a guy who started
>> balancing his checkbook in octal after a 2-month session in machine
>> language.
>
> Doesn't everyone balance their checkbook in octal?
No, I do mine in hex.
--
/~\ cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!
Eric Chomko
> On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:29:19 -0500, jmfbahciv wrote:
> > Charles Richmond wrote:
> >> jmfbahciv wrote:
> >>> Charles Richmond wrote:
> >>>> Ryan McCoskrie wrote:
> >>>>> ... You dream that the parenthesis are trying to drown you. Yes this
> >>>>> has happened to me, hope nobody minds that I bought it up.
>
> >>>> The plural is "parentheses"...
>
> >>> I read his blurb as one; you can drown if you don't close it.
>
> >> I read the OP as meaning multiple parentheses, because in LISP one is
> >> often presented with an overabundance of those glyphs. I can see how
> >> that could haunt one's dreams.
>
> >> I knew of a graduate student in math that had a similar dream the night
> >> before his aural defense of his master's thesis. He dreamed that he was
> >> extremely sick with flu symptoms. He went to the toilet and threw up,
> >> except all his vomit was composed of *equations*!!! I guess when you
> >> jam too much of anything in your head, it has to come out somewhere...
> >> :-)
>
> > Yep :-). Vomiting equations is a good one. I know a guy who started
> > balancing his checkbook in octal after a 2-month session in machine
> > language.
>
> Doesn't everyone balance their checkbook in octal?
>
Hex
Eric Chomko
I get the "old soul" part, but are you truly 3038 years old. It would
explain a lot...
Ryan McCoskrie
> Ryan McCoskrie wrote:
>> ... You dream that the parenthesis are trying to drown you.
>> Yes this has happened to me, hope nobody minds that I bought
>> it up.
>>
>
> The plural is "parentheses"...
>
*Recovering from shock of cascading post* It meant it in plural. I grew
up calling the things brackets (singular bracket). It's a heap easier
that way.
Also a little confession here. I changed the specifics of the dream that
I had. I was drowning in the middle of an infinite sea of brackets.
Anybody else have stories about having hacked to long?
--
Quote of the login:
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to
the irrelevant.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Ryan McCoskrie <ryan.mc...@invalid.invalid> writes:
> *Recovering from shock of cascading post* It meant it in plural. I grew
> up calling the things brackets (singular bracket). It's a heap easier
> that way.
>
>
> Also a little confession here. I changed the specifics of the dream that
> I had. I was drowning in the middle of an infinite sea of brackets.
>
> Anybody else have stories about having hacked to long?
i got a student job to re-implement/port the 1401 MPIO program to
360/30. MPIO was the tape<->read/print/punch unitt record frontend for
709 (which ran ibsys tape<->tape). It was possibly somewhat make-work
... getting experience with 360 ... while waiting for the whole
operation to be replaced with 360/67 (aka 360/30 had 1401 hardware
emulation which could run MPIO w/o it having to be ported).
In any case, I got to design & implement my own monitor, dispatcher,
storage management, device drivers, interrupt handlers, error recover,
etc.
The application eventually grew to 2000 cards ... and took approx. 30
minutes to assembler and generate "binary" (actually hexadecimal)
executable txt deck (if conditional assemblers were set to assembler for
os/360 system services & macros ... it took nearly 30 minutes to
assemble the five DCB macros ... just about hr total).
The datacenter shutdown for weekends ... so I had the whole room from
8am sat. to 8am monday ... 48hrs straight ... little hard making monday
classes after not have slept since friday night.
because it took so long to reassemble ... to perform testing ... i got
in the habit of modifying the executable cards ... by putting the
appropriate card into 026/029 keypunch ... duping out to the columns
needing the change ... and then "multi-punching" the new hex into the
appropriate place. after spending some number of weekends doing this ...
i got so that i could read the holes in the card ... fan the deck
looking at the columns with the "address" field punch holes until I came
to the address/card I wanted.
there about some past discussions about computer literacy is when you
start thinking/dreaming in machine code ... as opposed to english (or
other natural language). computer language literacy ... is not when you
can design a program and then easily translate it into C, Pascal, Cobol,
Fortran or PLI (or whatever) ... but when the program is being designed
directly in the language that it will be written in (small analogy to
writing english poems in english ... rather than in some other language
and then translating to english).
then you are sometimes faced with a problem that nobody understands how
the program works ... and there are no english words to describe it
... and being blamed (its your fault) because you are unable to describe
the workings in a way that other people can understand (because there
are no english words for describing how it works); aka if they can't
understand it ... it isn't their fault.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
Roland Hutchinson
> In article <hgci4b$77n$4...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> my.sp...@verizon.net (Roland Hutchinson) writes:
>
>> On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:29:19 -0500, jmfbahciv wrote:
>>
>>> Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>
>>>> I knew of a graduate student in math that had a similar dream the
>>>> night before his aural defense of his master's thesis. He dreamed
>>>> that he was extremely sick with flu symptoms. He went to the toilet
>>>> and threw up, except all his vomit was composed of *equations*!!! I
>>>> guess when you jam too much of anything in your head, it has to come
>>>> somewhere...
>>>> :-)
>>>
>>> Yep :-). Vomiting equations is a good one. I know a guy who started
>>> balancing his checkbook in octal after a 2-month session in machine
>>> language.
>>
>> Doesn't everyone balance their checkbook in octal?
>
> No, I do mine in hex.
Youngsters!
Mensanator
wrote:
> Charles Richmond wrote:
> > Ryan McCoskrie wrote:
> >> ... You dream that the parenthesis are trying to drown you.
> >> Yes this has happened to me, hope nobody minds that I bought
> >> it up.
>
> > The plural is "parentheses"...
>
> *Recovering from shock of cascading post* It meant it in plural. I grew
> up calling the things brackets (singular bracket). It's a heap easier
> that way.
>
> Also a little confession here. I changed the specifics of the dream that
> I had. I was drowning in the middle of an infinite sea of brackets.
>
> Anybody else have stories about having hacked to long?
Well, I once had a dream (I'm not sure how much was a dream and
how much was made up while waking up).
The dream was where regular mice and keyboards were replaced by
the M.O.U.S.E. (Micrp Optical Universal Sensory Element).
You operated the computer simply by glaring at it. Every
computer had one and the M.O.U.S.E. also networked all the
computers together.
I found myself looking out over a vast room full of computers
(something akin to a NASA control room) when a disaster struck.
Somehow, every bit of every computer in the whole world became a
0 simultaneously. With no actual keyboards in existence, no one
could figure out how to get them unstuck.
So I rummaged through a desk drawer and pulled out the M.O.U.S.E.
prototype (about the size of a sugar cube) that was hand wired onto
a four-banger calculator.
With the display showing 0, I pushed the 1/x key.
The display started flashing 99999999 and looking out over the sea of
blank computer screens, I saw them light up as the overflow propagated
through all the computers in the world.
Okay, Sigmund, what does that mean?
I used to be concerned that I couldn't remember dreams once I woke up
and was afraid I was solving great problems only to forget them.
Well, I caught the sub-conscience red-handed once.
I dreamed I was signing in at a hospital. After writing the
date, the nurse looked at it and said "That's last week."
Upon checking, I realized that instead of MMDDYYYY, I had written the
date as DDMMYYYY.
Of course, when I woke up, I could not remember what I wrote, but I
thought "Aha! I can deduce what I wrote by finding a pattern that
when DD is swapped with MM, the result is from the previous week!"
No such pattern exists.
I no longer worry that my sub-conscience is solving great problems
behind my back.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> there about some past discussions about computer literacy is when you
> start thinking/dreaming in machine code ... as opposed to english (or
> other natural language). computer language literacy ... is not when you
> can design a program and then easily translate it into C, Pascal, Cobol,
> Fortran or PLI (or whatever) ... but when the program is being designed
> directly in the language that it will be written in (small analogy to
> writing english poems in english ... rather than in some other language
> and then translating to english).
>
> then you are sometimes faced with a problem that nobody understands how
> the program works ... and there are no english words to describe it
> ... and being blamed (its your fault) because you are unable to describe
> the workings in a way that other people can understand (because there
> are no english words for describing how it works); aka if they can't
> understand it ... it isn't their fault.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#56 You know you've been Lisp hacking to long when
some drift/variation on "computer language"
past threads discussing SQL "3-value" logic operations with NULLs
... would have results that were the "inverse" of what people
would intuitively expect:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#40 How to cope with missing values - NULLS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#75 NULL
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#22 3 value logic. Why is SQL so special?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#23 3 value logic. Why is SQL so special?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#29 3 value logic. Why is SQL so special?
recent posts about people getting confused with boolean query operations
out at 6-7 terms ... peoples' expectations being the inverse of
(confusing AND & OR results) what they were getting (I knew somebody who
would remind people that one of his specialties was expert in doing 40+
SQL clauses):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#88 Continous Systems Modelling Package
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#25 Old datasearches
In the early 70s, I wrote a PLI program to analyze 360 assembler
listings. One of the common failure modes in cp67 was attempting to use
a register (frequently for address value) that hadn't been correctly
initialized. I was trying to identify all possible execution flows thru
a program and keep track of registers use & initialize/not-initialize
history. Basically reduce the program to groups of sequentially executed
instructions ... bracketed at the top 1) coming after a conditional
branch or 2) join of two or more execution flows (aka target of branch
instructions) and at the bottom with a 1) conditional branch or 2) join
of some other execution flows (target of branch instruction).
Then for exercise ... I tried generating higher level (PLI like)
statment representation of the assembler statements (aka a 360 "A
R5,something" becomes "R5 = R5+something". Trying to represent some of
the conditional execution flow with if/then/else sometimes got very
(very) messy.
Results of instructions could have four state (four-value logic) ... and
some highly optimized sequences might have series of instruction
followed by two or three branch instructions (i.e. instruction results
in four possible states, conditional branch instructions had four bits
... could represent any combination of the four states. Simple flavor
would be "test-under-mask" of single bit ... simple binary true/false.
However, "TM" could specify testing of up to eight bits ... and
condition was "all ones", "all zeros", or "mixed" (at least one one and
at least one zero).
misc. past posts mentioning the PLI program:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#12 360 "OS" & "TSS" assemblers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#36 Assembly language formatting on IBM systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#38 GOTOs cross-posting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#34 Macros and base register question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#21 REXX still going strong after 25 years
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#36 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#35 Shipwrecks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#16 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#52 Where should the type information be?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#32 transputers again was: The demise of Commodore
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#1 Greatest Software Ever Written?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#27 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#21 "The Elements of Programming Style"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#1 "The Elements of Programming Style"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#57 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#65 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#49 Any benefit to programming a RISC processor by hand?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#30 Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#43 Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#32 Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss
David Powell
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> in alt.folklore.computers
wrote:
>In article <hgci4b$77n$4...@news.eternal-september.org>,
>my.sp...@verizon.net (Roland Hutchinson) writes:
>
>> On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:29:19 -0500, jmfbahciv wrote:
>>
>>> Charles Richmond wrote:
>>>
>>>> I knew of a graduate student in math that had a similar dream the
>>>> night before his aural defense of his master's thesis. He dreamed
>>>> that he was extremely sick with flu symptoms. He went to the toilet
>>>> and threw up, except all his vomit was composed of *equations*!!!
>>>> I guess when you jam too much of anything in your head, it has to
>>>> come somewhere...
>>>> :-)
>>>
>>> Yep :-). Vomiting equations is a good one. I know a guy who started
>>> balancing his checkbook in octal after a 2-month session in machine
>>> language.
>>
>> Doesn't everyone balance their checkbook in octal?
>
>No, I do mine in hex.
I used to do mine using a combination of base-12, -20 and -10
arithmetic.
Regards,
David P.
Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Working to the farthing would have added base 4 to the mix.
--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
Phil Stovell
> On Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:53:00 +0000
> David Powell <ddotp...@icuknet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> In article <1063.672T3...@kltpzyxm.invalid>,
>> "Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> in alt.folklore.computers
>> wrote:
>>
>> >In article <hgci4b$77n$4...@news.eternal-september.org>,
>> >my.sp...@verizon.net (Roland Hutchinson) writes:
>> >
>> >
>> >> Doesn't everyone balance their checkbook in octal?
>> >
>> >No, I do mine in hex.
>>
>> I used to do mine using a combination of base-12, -20 and -10
>> arithmetic.
>
> Working to the farthing would have added base 4 to the mix.
I always remember everything priced at 19s 11 3/4 d. Now it's £99.99.