From: wobblygong at gmail.com (Wesley Parish)
Subject: [COFF] Fwd: Old and Tradition was [TUHS] V9 shell
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2020 10:47:36 +1300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CACNPpebobefEHBLpPi4kbNCf-2-GNoVPndYG3CkKUUTQJoCOsw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2MM8nP+j2gRxFu=WYu0HaABjvjdTJZda0TZ22c-kRAh7g@mail.gmail.com>
I think it's implicit with fooling around with slide rules. Everything
is logarithmic, therefore imprecise beyond a certain level (floating
point number or iteration, it's the same problem). You learn to
approximate, within a certain level of confidence (or diffidence :).
(FWVLIW - I bought a Dover book on slide rule in the late 70s while at
high school, and shortly after, a real slide rule, and it's stuck with
me.)
Wesley Parish
On 2/13/20, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 10:01 PM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
>> What little Fortran background I have suggests that the difference
>> might be mind set. Fortran programmers are formally trained (at least I
>> was, there was a whole semester devoted to this) in accumulated errors.
>> You did a deep dive into how to code stuff so that the error was reduced
>> each time instead of increased. It has a lot to do with how floating
>> point works, it's not exact like integers are.
>
> Just a thought, but it might also be the training. My Dad (a
> mathematician and 'computer') passed a few years ago, I'd love to have
> asked him. But I suspect when he and his peeps were doing this with a
> slide rule or at best an Friden mechanical adding machine, they were
> acutely aware of how errors accumulated or not. When they started to
> convert their processes/techniques to Fortran in the early 1960s, I agree
> with you that I think they were conscious of what they were doing. I'm
> not sure modern CS types are taught the same things as what might be taught
> in a course being run by a pure scientist who cares in the same way folks
> like our mothers and fathers did in the 1950s and 60s.
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-02-16 21:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-02-11 18:41 [COFF] " clemc
[not found] ` <CAP2nic2C4-m_Epcx7rbW2ssbS850ZFiLKiL+hg1Wxbcwoaa1vQ@mail.gmail.com>
2020-02-12 0:57 ` [COFF] Fwd: " athornton
2020-02-12 1:58 ` clemc
2020-02-12 3:01 ` lm
2020-02-12 18:12 ` clemc
2020-02-12 21:55 ` cym224
2020-02-12 22:11 ` imp
2020-02-12 22:45 ` sauer
2020-02-12 23:05 ` lm
2020-02-12 23:54 ` [COFF] floating point (Re: " bakul
2020-02-12 23:56 ` bakul
2020-02-13 1:21 ` toby
2020-02-13 6:57 ` [COFF] Fwd: " peter
2020-02-16 21:47 ` wobblygong [this message]
2020-02-16 22:10 ` clemc
2020-02-16 22:45 ` krewat
2020-02-16 23:50 ` bakul
2020-02-18 0:17 ` dave
2020-02-18 12:48 ` jpl.jpl
2020-02-24 9:40 ` ik
2020-02-24 15:19 ` lm
[not found] ` <CAP2nic0fK+=eh=5MuY4BJH6zx4tCRMWcazmm1khYMzNmEdf8ug@mail.gmail.com>
2020-02-24 16:15 ` [COFF] [TUHS] Fwd: Old and Tradition was " clemc
2020-02-24 16:19 ` clemc
2020-02-24 16:27 ` [COFF] Fwd: Old and Tradition was [TUHS] " clemc
2020-02-12 16:28 jnc
2020-02-12 18:13 ` clemc
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