* Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation [not found] ` <CAP2nic0d7Kg1-i3w=6220NfBTQh7TaZ6nMsNx7NWLE+dTn5Z7w@mail.gmail.com> @ 2021-11-16 16:19 ` Clem Cole 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Clem Cole @ 2021-11-16 16:19 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Adam Thornton, COFF [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3152 bytes --] Moving to COFF ... On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 10:50 AM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm not even sure how much of this you can lay at the feet of teachers: I > would argue that we see a huge efflorescence of essentially self-taught > programming cobbled together from (in the old days) the system manuals a > Ouch ... this is exactly my point. In my experience in ~55 years of programming, with greater than 45 of those being paid to do it, the best programmers I know and have worked with were taught/mentored by a master -- not self-taught. As I said, I had to be re-educated once I got the CMU. My Dad had done the best he knew, but much of what he taught me was shortcuts and tricks because that is what he knew 🠪 he taught me syntax, not how to think. I know a lot of programmers (like myself) that were self-taught or introduced to computing by novices to start and that experience get them excited, but all of them had real teachers/mentors who taught them the true art form and helped them unlearn a lot of crap that they had picked up or miss-interpreted. Looking at my father as a teacher, he really had never been taught to think like a programmer. In the late 1950s he was a 'computer' [see the movie "Hidden Figures"]. He was taught FORTRAN and BASIC and told to implement things he had been doing by hand (solving differential equations using linear algebra). The ideas we know and loved about structured programming and* how to do this well* were still being invented by folks like Doug and his sisters and brothers in the research community. It's no surprise that my Dad taught me to 'hack' because he and I had nothing to compare to. BTW: this is not to state all HS computer teachers are bad, but the problem is that most people that are really good at programming are actually quite rare and they tend to end up in research or industry -- not teaching HS. Today, the typical HS computer teacher (like one of my nieces) takes a course or two at UMASS in the teacher's college. They are never taught to program or take the same courses the kids in science and engineering take 🠪 BTW I also think this is why we see so much of the popular press talking about 'coding' not programming. They really think learning to program is learning the syntax of a specific programming language. When I look at the young people I hire (and mentor) told, it's not any different. BTW: Jon and I had a little bit of a disagreement when he wrote his book. He uses Javascript for a lot of his examples - because of exactly what you point out 🠪 Javascript today, like BASIC before it, has a very high "on-screen results" factor with little work by the user. Much is being done behind the covers to make that magic happen. I tend to believe that creates a false sense of knowledge/understanding. To Jon's credit, he tries to bridge that in his book. As I said, I thought I knew a lot more about computers until I got to CMU. Boy was I in for an education. That said, I was lucky to be around some very smart people who helped steer me. Clem ᐧ [-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 5742 bytes --] [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 141 bytes --] _______________________________________________ COFF mailing list COFF@minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation
@ 2021-12-06 14:29 Noel Chiappa
0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2021-12-06 14:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: coff, tuhs; +Cc: jnc
OK, this is my last _civil_ request to stop email-bombing both lists with
trafic. In the future, I will say publicly _exactly_ what I think - and if
screens still had phosphor, it would probably peel it off.
I can see that there are cases when one might validly want to post to both
lists - e.g. when starting a new discusson. However, one of the two should
_always_ be BCC'd, so that simple use of reply won't generate a copy to
both. I would suggest that one might say something like 'this discussion is
probably best continued on the <foo> list' - which could be seeded by BCCing
the _other_.
Thank you.
Noel
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread[parent not found: <CAKH6PiWtxq7vwh_WdVtZx9-qqN5aNr+t14eTAJx9-eLWjYF0BQ@mail.gmail.com>]
* Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation [not found] <CAKH6PiWtxq7vwh_WdVtZx9-qqN5aNr+t14eTAJx9-eLWjYF0BQ@mail.gmail.com> @ 2021-12-06 4:25 ` Adam Thornton 2021-12-06 14:11 ` Clem Cole 0 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Adam Thornton @ 2021-12-06 4:25 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Douglas McIlroy, The Eunuchs Hysterical Society, Computer Old Farts Followers [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 857 bytes --] Probably time to move this to COFF, but along the line of Fission for Program Comprehension.... I wonder how many of you don't know about Don Lancaster. Pioneer in home computing back when that meant something, inventor of a very low cost 1970s video terminal (the TV Typewriter), tremendously skilled hacker, brilliant guy. Also still alive, lives a couple hours away from me in Safford, AZ, and has been doing fantastic research on Native American hanging canals for the last couple decades. Anyway: he wrote a magnificent piece on how to understand a (6502) program from its disassembly, which reminded me of Gibbons's work: https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/tearing_rework.pdf I don't think Don ever had a lot of crossover with the more academic world of Unix people, but he's one of my heroes and I have learned a hell of a lot from his works. Adam [-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 1155 bytes --] [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 141 bytes --] _______________________________________________ COFF mailing list COFF@minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation 2021-12-06 4:25 ` Adam Thornton @ 2021-12-06 14:11 ` Clem Cole 2021-12-06 14:22 ` Dan Cross 0 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Clem Cole @ 2021-12-06 14:11 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Adam Thornton Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society, Computer Old Farts Followers, Douglas McIlroy [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1606 bytes --] Adam - first thank you. Pleased to know he's still kicking around. On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 11:26 PM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote: > I don't think Don ever had a lot of crossover with the more academic world > of Unix people, but he's one of my heroes and I have learned a hell of a > lot from his works. > Not true at all. If you grew up as EE, in the late 1960s/early 1970s it was hard to not know about him since he was so prolific. FWIW, before I went to CMU, he was already a hero and I had a number of books from the late 1960's. When I was freshman in the early 1970s, his TTL Cookbook was an optional text for the intro to EE course [I already had it but a number of my mates had never seen it before]. His CMOS Cookbox was not published yet, but when it was, I bought it. Side story, I want to say about 1969/70, after reading one of his articles in Radio-Electronics I sent him a (US snail mail) letter asking him for help in designing an RF interface to a TV. He replied to me but told me such a design would be illegal to make as it would run afoul of FCC rules. I wish I had kept that letter, but he reversed himself a few years later with his TV Typewriter and Son of Video books. My guess is he had been researching the idea for one of the magazines when I contacted him, and must have gotten a ruling from legal counsel about publishing the same. I always wondered what made him change his mind a few years later. Since he seems to publish an email, I think I'll have to write him and ask that way to see if he responds. Clem ᐧ [-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 3118 bytes --] [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 141 bytes --] _______________________________________________ COFF mailing list COFF@minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation 2021-12-06 14:11 ` Clem Cole @ 2021-12-06 14:22 ` Dan Cross 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Dan Cross @ 2021-12-06 14:22 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Clem Cole; +Cc: Computer Old Farts Followers, Douglas McIlroy [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1009 bytes --] [TUHS to Bcc] On Mon, Dec 6, 2021 at 9:15 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote: > Adam - first thank you. Pleased to know he's still kicking around. > > On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 11:26 PM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I don't think Don ever had a lot of crossover with the more academic >> world of Unix people, but he's one of my heroes and I have learned a hell >> of a lot from his works. >> > Not true at all. If you grew up as EE, in the late 1960s/early 1970s it > was hard to not know about him since he was so prolific. FWIW, before I > went to CMU, he was already a hero and I had a number of books from the > late 1960's. When I was freshman in the early 1970s, his TTL Cookbook was > an optional text for the intro to EE course [I already had it but a number > of my mates had never seen it before]. His CMOS Cookbox was not published > yet, but when it was, I bought it. > Indeed, still well-known: I have both his TTL and CMOS cookbooks within easy reach. - Dan C. [-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 1927 bytes --] [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 141 bytes --] _______________________________________________ COFF mailing list COFF@minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
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* Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation [not found] ` <CAFH29tomxKDFn-pRBT21-X+m4ugzzn-tuGyY-Cq0hN6i5-=oeQ@mail.gmail.com> @ 2021-11-16 15:53 ` Adam Thornton 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Adam Thornton @ 2021-11-16 15:53 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Computer Old Farts Followers [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 417 bytes --] From TUHS (to Doug McIlroy): "Curious what you think of APL" I'm sure what Doug thinks of APL is unprintable. Unless, of course, he has the special type ball. <rimshot> On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 8:23 AM Richard Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote: > > The former notation C(B(A)) became A->B->C. This was PL/I's gift to C. >> > > You seem to have a gift for notation. That's rare. Curious what you think > of APL? > [-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 1011 bytes --] [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 141 bytes --] _______________________________________________ COFF mailing list COFF@minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
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[parent not found: <CAEdTPBdVnPQMaDX0jOL81EkL1M7Eg=U4qWPwKMsr6SBc2Zz9vw@mail.gmail.com>]
* Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation [not found] ` <CAEdTPBdVnPQMaDX0jOL81EkL1M7Eg=U4qWPwKMsr6SBc2Zz9vw@mail.gmail.com> @ 2021-11-23 15:23 ` Clem Cole 2021-11-23 19:40 ` Dan Cross 1 sibling, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Clem Cole @ 2021-11-23 15:23 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Henry Bent; +Cc: COFF, Mary Ann Horton [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3657 bytes --] Moving to COFF where this probably belongs because its less UNIX and more PL oriented. On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 3:00 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote: > What language were the PL/I compilers written in? > I don't know about anyone else, but the VAX PL/1 front-end was bought by DEC from Freiburghouse (??SP??) in Framingham, MA. It was written in PL/1 on a Multics system. The Front-end was the same one that Pr1me used although Pr1me also bought their Fortran, which DEC did not. [FWIW: The DEC/Intel Fortran Front-End was written in Pascal -- still is last time I talked to the compiler folks]. I do not know what the Freiburghouse folks used for a compiler-compiler (Steve or Doug might ), but >>I think<< it might not have used one. Culter famously led the new backend for it and had to shuttle tapes from MIT to ZKO in Nashua during the development. The backend was written in a combination of PL/1, BLISS32 and Assembler. Once the compiler could self host, everything moved to ZKO. That compiler originally targeted VMS, but was moved to Unix/VAX at one point as someone else pointed out. When the new GEM compilers were about 10-15 years later, I was under the impressions that the original Freiburghouse/Culter hacked front-end was reworked to use the GEM backend system, as GEM used BLISS, and C for the runtimes and a small amount of Assembler as needed for each ISA [And I believe it continues to be the same from VSI folks today]. GEM based PL/1 was released on Alpha when I was still at DEC, and I believe that it was released for Itanium a few years later [by Intel under contract to Compaq/HP]. VSI has built a GEM based Intel*64 and is releasing/has released VMS for same using it; I would suspect they moved PL/1 over also [Their target customer is the traditional DEC VMS customer that still has active applications and wants to run them on modern HW]. I'll have to ask one of my former coworkers, who at one point was and I still think is, the main compiler guy at VSI/resident GEM expert. > Wikipedia claims that IBM is still developing a PL/I compiler, which I > suppose I have no reason to disbelieve, but I'm very curious as to who is > using it and for what purpose. > As best I can tell, commercial sites still use it for traditional code, just like Cobol. It's interesting, Intel does neither but we spend a ton of money on Fortran because so much development (both old and new) in the scientific community requires it. I answered why elsewhere in more detail: Where is Fortran used these days <https://www.quora.com/Where-is-Fortran-used-these-days/answers/87679712> and Is Fortran still alive <https://www.quora.com/Is-Fortran-still-alive/answer/Clem-Cole> My >>guess<< is that PL/1 is suffering the same fate as Cobol, and fading because the apps are being/have been slowly rewritten from custom code to using COTS solutions from folks like Oracle, SAS, BAAN and the like. Not so for Fortran and the reason is that the math has not changed. The core of these codes is the same was it was in the 1960s/70s when they were written. A friend of mine used to be the Chief Metallurgist for the US Gov at NIST and as Dr. Fek put it so well: * "I have over 60 years worth of data that we have classified and we understand what it is telling us. If you magically gave me new code to do the same thing as what we do with our processes that we have developed over the years, I would have to reclassify all that data. It's just not economically interesting." *I personally equate it to the QWERTY keyboard. Just not going to change. *i.e.* *"Simple economics always beats sophisticated architecture."* [-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 5836 bytes --] [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 141 bytes --] _______________________________________________ COFF mailing list COFF@minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation [not found] ` <CAEdTPBdVnPQMaDX0jOL81EkL1M7Eg=U4qWPwKMsr6SBc2Zz9vw@mail.gmail.com> 2021-11-23 15:23 ` Clem Cole @ 2021-11-23 19:40 ` Dan Cross 1 sibling, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Dan Cross @ 2021-11-23 19:40 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Henry Bent; +Cc: COFF, Mary Ann Horton [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1159 bytes --] [-TUHS, +COFF] On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 3:00 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, 22 Nov 2021 at 21:31, Mary Ann Horton <mah@mhorton.net> wrote: > >> PL/I was my favorite mainframe programming language my last two years as >> an undergrad. I liked how it incorporated ideas from FORTRAN, ALGOL, and >> COBOL. My student job was to enhance a PL/I package for a History >> professor. >> > > What language were the PL/I compilers written in? > The only PL/I compiler I have access to is, somewhat ironically, the Multics PL/1 compiler. It is largely self-hosting; more details can be found here: https://multicians.org/pl1.html (Note Doug's name appears prominently.) Wikipedia claims that IBM is still developing a PL/I compiler, which I > suppose I have no reason to disbelieve, but I'm very curious as to who is > using it and for what purpose. > I imagine most of it is legacy code in a mainframe environment, similarly to COBOL. I can't imagine that many folks are considering new development in PL/1 other than in retro/hobbyist environments and some mainframe shops where there's a heavy existing PL/I investment. - Dan C. [-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 2103 bytes --] [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 141 bytes --] _______________________________________________ COFF mailing list COFF@minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
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2021-11-16 16:19 ` [COFF] [TUHS] Book Recommendation Clem Cole
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2021-12-06 4:25 ` Adam Thornton
2021-12-06 14:11 ` Clem Cole
2021-12-06 14:22 ` Dan Cross
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2021-11-16 15:53 ` Adam Thornton
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