DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄)

I'm a philomath (many interests; call it polymath-wanna-be) professional computer programmer in Silicon Valley, specializing in operating systems, languages/compilers, sometimes AI, usually non-traditional parallel software and hardware architectures.
Also:
#computer_science #unicode #unix #linux #bsd #unix_old_fart
#compilers
#operating_systems
#GOF_AI
#cognitive_science
#linguistics
#physics
#mathematics

Ex-springboard diver; scuba diver; free diver

Ars longa, vita brevis.

Public Key

npub1cqpvfl54huyxkvdgff08u69qkj60tzhwgd3jxwfq8qs83qxzwzdq7aus7x

NIP-05 Address

dougmerritt@mathstodon-xyz.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsvqqkyl62m7zrtxx5y5hn7dzstfd843thyxcer8ysrsgrcsrp8pxspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dslt2emm

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1cqpvfl54huyxkvdgff08u69qkj60tzhwgd3jxwfq8qs83qxzwzdq7aus7x

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-02-05 21:51:41 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…72p6 @nprofile…wjmx
> I would surprise me if that were not the case... but I guess that a target system that's to be modeled is rarely sufficiently closed.
Right. Well, the latter varies.
> that's cybernetics, isn't it?
Modern cybernetics overlaps with Control Theory but they are not identical, and it's understandable to conflate the two, especially considering the famous birth of cybernetics in the 1940s and 1950s with Norbert Wiener et al:
> Many fields trace their origins in whole or part to work carried out in cybernetics, or were partially absorbed into cybernetics when it was developed. These include artificial intelligence, bionics, cognitive science, control theory, complexity science, computer science, information theory and robotics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics
You can see that that list of topics was not wholly subsumed into cybernetics.
In university they teach Fourier Analysis for formal analysis of input systems such as electronic and optical filters, and then they teach Laplace Analysis as a generalization for controlling systems -- typically electronic, but also mechanical, chemical, manufacturing, etc.
Mathematically Laplace transforms are a generalization of Fourier transforms. The latter are based on bounded regions of space, and on a unit circle at that, assuming periodic input signals and yielding periodic solutions (with sometimes well-justified hacks to deal with reality not being periodic).
The former are not confined to the unit circle nor to bounded regions of space, and in Control Theory strongly emphasize stable control of the system in question -- which is where it overlaps with cybernetics.
This is far from my strongest area, but hopefully it's not wrong. 🙂 Amen?

2026-02-05 21:27:02 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
Going off on a tangent about your Control Theory analogy, I wonder if Laplace Transforms have been applied to economics, including bubbles.
Undoubtedly this has been done -- by some of the brilliant quants in fintech houses, if no one else -- but I'm unfamiliar with that application.
In-house fintech work would generally be quiet trade secrets, but maybe others have published.

2026-02-05 21:19:57 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
> To use an analogy from engineering Control Theory, this modern trend is a closed-loop non-linear feedback system with a high (> 1.0) loop gain—a perfect formula for #instability
Mathematically it diverges, which for some perhaps is intended??

2026-02-05 21:19:00 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
Sad.
> my clients...always wanted to learn about not only the practice (the prescriptive, the how), but also the theory (the descriptive, the what) and the philosophy (the ethics, the why) of their work...in recent times, the trend is toward a deaf, blind focus on the how, and an utter disregard for the what and the why
Yes, I agree, you should return to being far more discriminating about your clients. 😆 🤣

2026-02-05 19:34:45 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…fh5j
Hmm. Interesting. And was that particular thing also true a few short years ago?

2026-02-05 19:22:47 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…fh5j
Closely adjacent micro-climates, and all that.

2026-02-05 19:18:54 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…fh5j
Yes.
Well, to clarify, those larger scale events are not confusing, even though we can never have quite enough such data.
I meant that the weather here is often significantly different than both actuality and predictions of areas a mere 10 to 20 miles away in any given direction.

2026-02-05 19:07:40 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…fh5j
Sigh. I've been worried about that, but I can't tell very well here in San Jose, which has somewhat unpredictable weather in general.

2026-02-05 16:31:53 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
I immediately manage a hypothetical future (or science fiction story) police stop:
"Stop right there buddy, do you have a license to operate that White House?"

2026-02-05 16:02:30 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…g03k
It concludes:
> Algorithmic complexity anticipates a certain
“continuity” of N, since the complexity of n+1 is always close to that of n.
The discontinuity that is manifest in Sloane’s gap is thus difficult to attribute
to purely mathematical properties independent of social contingencies.
By contrast, as we have seen, it is explained very well by the conduct
of research that entails the over-representation of certain numbers of weak
or medium complexity. Thus the cloud of points representing the function
N shows features that can be understood as being the result of at the same
time human and purely mathematical factors.

2026-02-04 18:00:06 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
My mistake. 🙄

2026-02-04 17:56:19 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
> Quantum boom, maybe?
That one is 100% bubble that collapsed before it started. Hypothetical future ideal quantum computers aren't known to be able to do much beyond breaking security like RSA -- although I hope they would more easily simulate quantum systems, a boon to physics.
This is well-established and even well-known. It's just ignored by the hype makers.

2026-02-03 21:03:52 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
I've read that even Africa has the same problem: to white Americans and Europeans, Africans all just seem to have dark skin, so what's the deal, but from what I've read, every region is strongly prejudiced against the minority *tribes* in their boundaries.
Similar comments apply to India, where it's not just about brahmins and untouchables, it's about minorities, as usual.

2026-02-03 20:51:08 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
Some Republican on CNN said that Lemon disrupted church services with protesting, so of course he was arrested.
But as far as I know, that's just a lie, and Lemon wasn't protesting at all, let alone disrupting.

2026-02-03 20:36:07 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
Oh -- and I'm reminded of now-old SF story where an AI (AGI) amused itself by reconstructing the appearance of someone's face just going by the view of the back of a human's head, then comparing with a frontal view.

2026-01-24 05:46:54 UTC

@nprofile…wjmx
Although it doesn't appear to impact us barbarians, the news has been saying that U.S. civilization (if in fact such exists) will be strongly impacted by the snow/sleet/etc in the storm hitting around now.
Half a meter of snow plus hail and sleet and whatnot sounds rather problematic; hope you and yours fair okay-ish!
Also hope Ronan is doing okay or better in college life, which I guess just restarted.

2026-01-22 01:16:11 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
That's for the new design where it goes ultrasonic.

2026-01-21 20:15:49 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
That is a very good point. NOA is super important, but the trumpation doesn't care.
BTW although I'm joking about the storm, this is a very unusual weather area, in that microclimates change over a matter of miles here, sometimes less. So one can go from storm to sunny skies in a 5 minute drive sometimes. And weather reports for one city may be meaningless to residents of the next city over, more to the point.

2026-01-21 19:36:52 UTC

@nprofile…wjmx
We here in the San Francisco Bay Area are destined for an historic storm; wish us luck:

2026-01-21 17:10:16 UTC

@nprofile…wjmx
A friend forwarded this, from a comment in yesterday's Engineering Archaeology meeting / conference / whatever it was:
> One [engineer] even had his [slide rule] hanging on the wall in a frame
> "Break glass [in] case of power failure".

2026-01-20 21:06:01 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
A-HA! I knew I'd eventually be able to prove that there's something about English you missed!
[Edit: incorrect paragraph deleted]
But in the phrase "become learned", "learned" is an adjective, just like "red" in "become red", and it is pronounced as two syllables, with an accent on the final syllable, and as an adjective it is synonymous with "erudite".
On second thought my explanation is incorrect, as is common with intuitions of native speakers. I'm going to have to look farther afield to figure this out.
But we *are* talking about #1 here, not #2:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary

2026-01-20 20:42:54 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
> become #learned
Easy for you to say, you and your 12 PhDs.

2026-01-19 23:34:31 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
Shhhhh, the AIs will hear you! You wanna get yourself killed in a "freak industrial accident"???

2026-01-18 17:18:59 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
Yes, people just do not respect linguistic categories, which makes descriptions such as histories chaotic.

2026-01-18 17:14:19 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…45cc
> Let me add that in this context, Operating System Programmer is akin to a hero in an ancient Greek myth.
As a sometime operating system programmer, I must agree that this is a basic eternal truth. 😆
But not from the PDP 6 era. Programming back then required working with, as Spock once said, "stone knives and bear skins".
I did have to use punch cards and punch tape, but mercifully, only for a brief time.
Same with Fortran and Cobol.
I don't remember what Gordon Bell looked like, so I can't pick him out in the photo.

2026-01-18 04:42:19 UTC

@nprofile…wjmx
Some terminology apparently depends on your environment rather than being universal. I had reason to look up DevOps, and it clearly excluded software development from IT as a separate endeavor, not included under the IT umbrella.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps

2026-01-13 19:10:36 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
Ok, but I can't help but feel that you're missing the importance of putting memes first and foremost.

2026-01-10 06:44:57 UTC

@nprofile…wjmx
Good old G-Shock.
https://mathstodon.xyz/@veer66@mstdn.in.th/115868494656064693

2026-01-09 19:57:00 UTC

@nprofile…wjmx @nprofile…38ae
This feels like a different paradigm than Prolog:
"Answer Set Programming" is declarative logic programming like Prolog, but unlike Prolog, does not require "operational semantics, and hence is " closer to the ideal of declarativism"
It also is similar to SAT solvers -- but are those really the same paradigm as Prolog? Well, maybe. From 20,000 feet.
Anyway this uses the "Clingo" language: "Input languages of answer set solvers provide many capabilities that are not available in Prolog. We will talk here about the art of programming for clingo, one of the best answer set solvers available today, and about the mathematics behind the design of its input language"
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~vl/teaching/378/ASP.pdf

2026-01-08 21:26:48 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wjmx
But now we have a terribly-regulated Militia, so clearly the second amendment doesn't have anything to say.
Checkmate.

2026-01-08 20:00:19 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…fh5j
I personally am terrified of visiting your site and getting captured.
(The news about ICE agents has increased my paranoia.)

2026-01-08 19:33:29 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…fh5j
Hmm, interesting statistics.

2026-01-08 06:55:04 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…38ae
I'm not so sure about adding anything multi-paradigm to the list, but I see that that point can be argued.
I see the motivation for all of them, in any case.
Except that I haven't really looked much at Python, and not at all at Elixer, unlike all those other languages (several of which I've even implemented 🙂 ), so I don't have an opinion otherwise.
@nprofile…wjmx

2026-01-08 05:51:41 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…38ae
True, and there are various arguments for and against each of those (and for any language, of course).
But note that you are sort of underscoring his point. C++ began as "C With Classes", a mix of C and Smalltalk (and then added a truly vast amount of avoidable complexity on top of that).
Haskell and OCaml are similarly mixes of Standard ML and other ideas.
I agree that entirely separate paradigms were introduced by SQL, Lisp (not Scheme), Prolog, and APL (not J) historically. So those fit in the list.
And it's fair to bend the rules and use Scheme as an improvement over Common Lisp, and to use J, a good modernization of APL.
I think Amen was aiming at fairly pure examples of foundational paradigms, not "best language to use", but any discussion of these things can quickly get complicated.
@nprofile…wjmx

2025-12-31 16:31:25 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…ygg9
For many years I wore only G-Shocks. The iwatch was a gift, to make the story short.

2025-12-31 02:21:40 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…ygg9
Old solutions never die, they just get more and more niche.
Maximum functionality in a finger-worn ring computer, for instance, is still a hell of a challenge regardless of approach used.
And in a more quotidian setting, the very limited battery life of my iwatch is constantly irritating.
The challenges are real, the solutions are...well, part of the challenge.

2025-12-31 01:10:31 UTC

@nprofile…ygg9
Since I noticed that you're short on projects and asking for lots more.

2025-12-30 23:48:23 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…ygg9
I don't understand why it's a regret as opposed to a learning project underway.

2025-12-30 21:01:12 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…jrm4
The original document refers to "FLIP [5]", which is unfortunately missing from the list of references at the end.
Any guesses what the missing citation might have been, and is that document available?

2025-12-28 07:17:57 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…atf6
I find that mildly surprising (but only mildly); could it be related to your areas of concentration?
It can be argued that Riemannian integration is more closely connected to numerical methods, or at least to historical such methods -- which reminds me that Scientific American had an article (maybe in the Amateur Scientist column -- ah, those were the days) back in the day about cutting out rectangles under a curve drawn on a piece of paper. :)
Measure theory is more general, usually more abstract, and usually less immediately useful for numerical methods, no?
Aside from that vague handwaving, well, different institutions have different fads (or subcultures, if you prefer), so who knows.
In any case, I have no doubt but that if what you studied *needed* measure theory and/or Lebesgue integration, then surely you would have found a way to cover it -- and that since you say you didn't, I guess you didn't need it.
(At this point I guess I should ask out of curiosity, what were you interested in at the time?)
As for sigma algebras in particular, to whatever extent they could be separated from other approaches to measure theory, for some reason I've had the vague feeling that they weren't *that* widely in vogue until more recent decades -- but I see that they're in Rudin's Real and Complex Analysis, so maybe I'm just plain wrong/confused about that.
At this point I'm starting to wonder if I'm just babbling; I'm short on sleep. Please have mercy if I'm speaking nonsense.
@nprofile…25az @nprofile…ag4u

2025-12-28 01:35:22 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…25az
I'm much happier with some sort of motivation like that, and my long-term hypothesis is that at least one major kind of mathematician does not feel the same way, and in fact perhaps that's why they chose a career in pure mathematics while I did not.
There are many kinds of people in the world, so it's not clear that it would be easy to get much traction on that sort of cognitive analysis.
@nprofile…ag4u

2025-12-27 07:01:58 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…ygg9
The formal inference rules for Hindley-Milner are quite short, so someone must have done *something* on this topic over the years.

2025-12-26 17:17:05 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…8eua @nprofile…5gem
Yes, I don't disagree -- but students of a field always find ways of viewing terminology in a way that makes it seem completely arbitrary, even though their teacher sees that it was motivated.

2025-12-26 17:00:43 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…ygg9
> Since time immemorial, humans have been specialists
I chose that as an essay topic for my high school anthropology class. I didn't know much, but recognized it as a deep subject, anyway.
> threw a blank stare when enquired about the denotation of the term "convolution".
For a mathematician or anyone doing signal processing, including many hardware engineers, that's kind of inconceivable.
For a CS guy in general it's not so odd, but in this case, umm....doesn't the "C" stand for "convolutional"? Seems like something is off there.

2025-12-20 15:58:37 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…9s72
It's an interesting possibility. Of course, it's also famous that the field of science fiction (and fantasy) was slow to develop the mainstream literature virtues, including character development.
The "three greats" of the early era were Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein, and none of them were paragons of virtue in such matters. Heinlein I believe came closest to showing care about character.
I could write essays about all this if I stopped and gathered my thoughts; it touches on many, many issues. But I stopped studying science fiction some decades ago.

2025-12-10 22:26:38 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…ygg9
You're behind the times. The writer, reader, and boss are all AIs now, no humans needed.

2025-12-10 13:34:45 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…hwjd
I respect your background and abilities, but surely that is the precise reason that you should pity those without the same.
Unless they're wrong, of course. That's utterly different, and calls for raising up occult demonic forces against them.
I infer that you're a 100th degree wizard, so that should be no problem for you.

2025-12-07 20:49:42 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…atf6
Non-specific anxiety. It's probably in the DSM, but I haven't read that in years/decades.

2025-12-06 18:30:27 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…hwjd
Wow, that is extremely unusual.
I guess if you visualize prime factors as sine waves, of course they will bunch up in certain places and cause peaks, but it's not at all obvious to me how to capture this particular behavior.
Number theory is always weird.

2025-12-02 20:46:29 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…atf6 @nprofile…stct
Yes, this has gone from "sounds annoying" to "weird" to "bizarre" and now is obviously in the camp of "space aliens".

2025-11-30 01:35:21 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…atf6
There are commercially available FPGA add-on boards for PCs. As perhaps you know. Which then suggests that maybe you're wishing for a better ecosystem surrounding them.
The debug cycle left much to be desired, last I looked.

2025-11-20 02:27:09 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…atf6
It's not immediately obvious to me what is going on, since presumably iphones don't use the old in-the-clear analog RF audio transmissions. Shared Bluetooth??

2025-11-15 23:29:50 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…hwjd
Then they are all likely cognates from ProtoIndoEuropean.

2025-11-06 08:18:21 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…uphn
I don't see how any kind of pattern would tell you how far away it is.
Also, the intensity depends on distance, that's the product of intensity at the source and distance, so it's still ambiguous.
Also my phone's earthquake app didn't report anything within the last 5 minutes, so it must have been an extremely large alien spaceship crashing somewhat near you.

2025-10-18 19:51:41 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…zs97
If you want a really impressive resume, swap the timescales on those two activities.

2025-10-17 18:21:39 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…hwjd
Are you making a joke local to me despite you being on the other side of the world? "El Camino Real" (Spanish for "The Royal Road") is the famous road running much of the length of California, established by the Spanish centuries ago to travel between the 21 Spanish missions.

2025-06-18 00:01:26 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…jc0y @nprofile…54aa
Yeah, I dunno. Different times. But it was pretty routine for upper class Europeans to routinely learn 4 to 6 languages.

2025-06-01 13:52:33 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…r4ut @nprofile…3flu
Paolo, you have of course had the same Pavlovian reflex as described in Proust's Rememberance of Things Past / La Recherche, where the taste of a madeleine cake dipped in tea triggers involuntary ancient nostalgic memories.
You never know when such a trigger might occur.
That reminds me that we're very lucky to still have Don Knuth with us -- and last I heard, still doing work.

2025-06-01 02:39:55 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…uxsy @nprofile…59k6 @nprofile…eqmp
You, sir, sound like an experienced warrior.
I do like ^Z though.

2025-06-01 02:22:24 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…uxsy @nprofile…59k6 @nprofile…eqmp
Good point!
I have excellent past experiences with xterm.

2025-05-31 00:11:25 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…dr5j @nprofile…f7v6
That's surprising.

2025-05-30 22:03:30 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…4aqs
Initial minor comment: note that Mmax ≈ 0.63212 equals 1 - e^-1

2025-05-30 20:25:06 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…f7v6 @nprofile…dr5j
Until you get his expert opinion: can't we assume that accuracy will "merely" affect the degree of descattering / deblurring?

2025-05-30 14:59:07 UTC

A 1-paragraph Zen story about "a poor man's types" that is moderately amusing:
https://blog.snork.dev/posts/a-poor-man-s-types.html

2025-05-23 01:38:26 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…59k6
"So mote it be"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_mote_it_be

2025-05-20 05:43:56 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…j6um
You are sentenced to repeat "mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" one hundred times.
BTW programming inherently involves creating bugs along with non-bugs, so we don't count bugs in the WRONG total.

2025-05-11 02:00:05 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
For the record, I like your gamejam idea and I like the Braitenberg approach (and I like itch.io), I just haven't thought of anything to say about it.

2025-05-09 18:43:25 UTC

Kernighan's lever
"You effortlessly wield clever programming techniques today that would've baffled your younger self. (If not, then I'm afraid you stopped evolving as a programmer long ago.)"
https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/kernighans-lever/index.php

2025-04-23 01:25:18 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…jc0y
Perhaps, but I was speaking for myself. :)

2025-04-20 01:03:11 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
Yeah that's funky. My wife likes really freeform jazz (sometimes), like Thelonious Monk -- who used to get so funky he would have to do a little dance on stage before going back to playing.
I have a much more pedestrian ear. Like Miles Davis -- who, however, invented his own music theory that most of us find impenetrable reading.
Really, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone are just fine with me (thanks for asking).
But you know, I grew up on classic rock, so that's really my first love.
Much later I discovered the Blues. Pretty cool.
Classical is ok now and then.
There you go digressing again. See how confused I look?

2025-04-17 21:58:05 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…jc0y @nprofile…l9v9 @nprofile…uxsy
*That* story gets complicated fast.

2025-04-17 21:47:26 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…jc0y @nprofile…uxsy
<shudder> I did *not* mean I was using Matlab instead of Octave.
Thank the stars.

2025-04-17 21:44:14 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…jc0y
Ack, I've never used Octave. I meant to, but...

2025-04-17 15:44:54 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…lcw2
I seriously doubt it. Dennis Ritchie and others made C arrays semi-equivalent to pointers because of very strong design goals; they were not unaware of stronger models for arrays, they were simply working with a small slow CPU.
There have been many efforts to extend C with e.g. array references that carry bounds information that is checked upon every reference, and many consider such things to be an improvement despite the runtime hit they inherently cause.
But those extended languages are not C.
E.g. the C dialect Cyclone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_(programming_language)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C-family_programming_languages

2025-04-17 02:15:25 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
Well really, that's precisely why I attend your events.
You have my shield! (sense 1) And support! (sense 2) I'll have to think about sponsorship! (sense 3)
Depending on dictionary.

2025-04-17 01:53:58 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
Oh, "complex character", right, I missed that.

2025-04-17 01:31:34 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
Ok, then, you suck. Better?

2025-04-17 01:30:30 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
Pragmatic is a good way to get things actually finished, unlike Xanadu (and unlike most of my projects). So good for you.

2025-04-17 01:22:42 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
*If* you're doing things depth first, then it is undoubtedly an excellent idea to do it one language a time, or indeed possibly just one language, period. Plenty of people try quite hard to do the latter, obviously.
I've done that, but I've also at other times gone breadth first and have over time learned many differerent languages. It depends on what you want to get done. Or sometimes what one's employer insists on. :)
Your Sandewal project seems pretty focused, as I understand it at the moment.
I've commented before that I've got absolutely no idea what your larger goals and interests are -- not that you owe me or anyone an explanation, it just makes it hard for me to comment outside of narrow contexts.

2025-04-17 00:46:30 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
I haven't looked at MOO language in over 30 years, so I can't comment on that without refreshing on my memory.
I *did* implement Objective C once (for HP), and the language extensions to C are really quite tiny. The rest is library. However over time everyones' libraries got weird, including naming (especially Next and therefore Apple), so it did not end up seeming like the clean small language it started out being.
I'm not sure what your intention is in looking at anything, though, so there I must pause.

2025-04-17 00:41:32 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
It's not like I enjoy power-centralizing, but I would wish for truly great solutions rather than lesser of evils solutions.

2025-04-17 00:40:29 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
Depends on the aspect of Smalltalk one is looking at. Ages ago I had the insight that part of why people considered Smalltalk so readable was that it used the equivalent of keyword arguments with keywords built out of natural language particles, like "UsingTool: ColorEditor".
There are other important aspects of Smalltalk as well, but that's one of the reasons I consider keyword arguments to be an important thing.

2025-04-17 00:37:43 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
You can bend over backwards to look at it from the point of view of people who allowed this behavior to last all these years, and to presumably be permanent at this point.
But I trust my own judgement about good/right/convenient/aesthetic design.

2025-04-17 00:34:52 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
However, the workaround, so that you need not wait an unbounded and unguessable amount of time, is to go to the post's home server.
(The post is about "I like all #programming languages but I have only a few that are my favourites. #Smalltalk is one of those few. But all the current open-source implementations still sport that Smalltalk-80, last-Century chic look....[back then Smalltalk] looked positively fresh, futuristic, and fun. But that look is now 45 years old." Etc.)
In the hopefully unlikely absence of still further errors, it should then be immediately readable -- although I believe *replying* to such a thing still results in that remote-to-you server telling your Mastodon client to take you back to your home server to make the reply.
I forget if I always have to actually follow the person who posted as an additional step in that reply.

2025-04-17 00:24:37 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
Yes, I provided the correct link.
These kinds of problems with federation are really quite unforgiveable IMHO; better to give up and go with a central server farm than to tolerate such nonsense. It makes Mastodon into a highly buggy half-assed solution. :-/

2025-04-17 00:13:46 UTC

@nprofile…l9v9
Speaking of famous 1980s software; from earlier today:
https://mathstodon.xyz/@AmenZwa/114349649220978923

2025-04-17 00:08:31 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
Wait, it's working now? I heard that you got it all fixed in *some* sense but saying "working" really brings it home. Congratulations.
Anyway although I'm not sure how much work it is *these* days to create either a major mode or a minor mode (which I hope you seriously considered), an emacs project to provide a wrapper for an outside program *might* not be a black hole, I guess.
I suppose there are all kinds of tools for controlling inferior processes?

2025-04-17 00:00:30 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…l9v9
You know what they say...telling the truth about your procrastination is...
Well, it's the step prior to more procrastination, basically.
Slightly more seriously, all emacs projects because endless black holes, so in terms of your non-emacs projects, procrastination on emacs projects is a net positive by virtue of ...hand waving.

2025-04-09 03:15:53 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…uxsy @nprofile…jc0y
Ha, I had not heard any of that. Presumably I've only seen propaganda from the ex-USSR.

2025-04-09 03:09:55 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…uxsy @nprofile…jc0y
Yikes! I can only imagine.
As for equivalents, I know only a little about classic Russian Literature. But including Pushkin.

2025-04-09 02:20:42 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…jc0y
Lots of logic there. All quite hopeless of course. I wanted to call you Don Quixote, but the windmills you are attacking are real monsters, not imaginations, so now I'm at a loss for a proper literary allusion.
Wait a minute. You skipped all the English-language humanities requirements, didn't you? I don't know any of the Burmese ones!
Also you know I advocate programming COBOL in EBCDIC on punch cards (although those clever 3-row ones are a nicely modern innovation).

2025-04-03 01:07:19 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…fa4k
And only a day late!

2025-01-31 19:58:15 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…3yjd
Probably you already know this, but it seems relevant:
It's the opposite of the historical "ultraviolet catastrophe" that forced major revolutions in physics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_catastrophe

2024-12-17 07:16:42 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…3yjd
Nice. I saw Johnny Winter concerts several times.
I also saw the semi-unique concert with Edgar Winter and Johnny Winter together; might have been 1976.

2024-12-13 07:31:19 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…3yjd
Naturally I've heard of Gabriel's Horn before, but I just thought of a puzzle for the Painter's Paradox.
Since the horn is filled with paint, the interior surfaces is clearly already painted. What if the horn suddenly becomes porous, such that the paint at every point on the interior migrates to the outer surface -- so it's now painted.
Having said that, there's a paradox right away with the start of that: the interior surface is the same area as the exterior surface. So even though it is filled with paint, somehow the paint that *seems* to be in contact with the interior *isn't*, because there's not enough.
Or even more directly: the paint's volume and surface area are identical to that of the horn, so the Painter's Paradox arises just with the paint, no horn needed.
But how can something made out of paint not be painted on its surface?
I have truly confused myself at this point.

2024-12-11 07:14:51 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…3yjd
PSA: titled "Geocentric Planetarium in the Antikythera Mechanism (Model Freeth/Jones 2012) - Venus and Mercury"

2024-09-09 19:20:36 UTC

- reply

@npub1cec…u8re
That's stack overflow for ya. You're the one millionth person to have such a problem there.