Re: choice of character for relational division
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 23:29:25 GMT
Message-ID: <plgQh.18518$aG1.17182_at_pd7urf3no>
Marshall wrote:
> On Apr 1, 8:42 pm, paul c <toledobythe..._at_oohay.ac> wrote:
>
>>Marshall wrote: >> >>>... >>>So ... what kind of code was this? If it was assembly, I could >>>see that working, because the format is so regular. If it's >>>anything in the algol family, I don't see how it could work. >>>There is formatting in the comments. There is formatting >>>in where the line breaks happen in long source lines. None >>>of this info is preserved in object form. And if it was, how >>>would editing be enabled such that everyone could edit >>>this information according to their own style, and yet others >>>could see it in *their* style? I don't see any way to make >>>that work without discarding some set of things programmers >>>are used to having. >> >>No vi or such. Only practical way to write code was to use system's >>built-in editor (which was written in the same language app developers >>used, although it was quite easy to generate object with the system or >>for that matter any other tool you liked, as long as you knew the object >>format which was trivial compared to what most people were used to then >>as well as today.
>
>
> Yeah, I see the advantages, but I don't think it's something that's
> going to sell well. You've got to get all the vi guys not to use vi,
> and all the emacs guys not to use emacs. That won't be pretty.
> ...
I've no mission, dim illumination would satisfy me. At one time, I was interested only in computers and how they worked and how they could work, but I was never as technically adept as a few people I knew. Now, I'm only interested in applications, preferably ones I can implement with a minimum of technicalites, even if that minimum avoids computers!
> It kinda reminds me of IBM's VisualAge, and the later Eclipse
> projects. I *really* hate both of them. They both take the
> position that the programmer should adapt to their way of
> doing things. Screw that; I want the tools to adapt to me;
> they are my servants, not the other way around.
> ...
I've rarely seen a computer "tool" that didn't seem haughty that way. The neat little useful tools seem to acquire some phony importance when the marketeers get their hands on them. If one is talented enough to master several such tools, I'm all for it, but most of us aren't and I think we must learn to bite off chunks that we can handle.
>>Tiny number of verbs, all table oriented, ...
>
> Interesting.
> ...
And yet I thought it was still too big, too many concepts.
>
>
>>However, none of that matters to my point - object code was stored in >>system's own tables which were accessible to any programmer, not just >>the system itself. The point is that original source code was not >>saved. Some users complained that they couldn't add comments but mostly >>we ignored them. To this day, I think source code management systems >>are a bizarre unnecessity.
>
>
> It seems to me that it would be quite possible to put object (and
> source
> as well) into the system's own tables without having to mandate
> the use of special purpose editors. Making the object the canonical
> representation means its harder (if not impossible) to use any
> existing tools on your code.
>
> Also, comments are a requirement. Whether our code is high
> level and declarative, or low level and procedural, our code
> can only capture *what* in the first case or *how* in the
> second case. Only comments are capable of capturing
> *why.*
> ...
If the source unit is small enough, one comment suffices, which means one comment table suffices. It is line-by-line comments that I think are silly, wasteful and usually pointless. Imagine an interpretive language where an individual piece of object code (ie., executable in its own right and therefor testable by itself) is limited, say to 4K bytes, even including various literals. There are some numbers that seem to have wide mental usefulness, eg., a stack of seven things we can push and pop in our heads, such as a telephone number, or a 250cc motorcycle that is nimble in town but can keep one alive on the highway. Several thousand bytes has always seemed to me the kind of size of a program that humans find tractable without deep introspection.
I better shut up for now.
p Received on Tue Apr 03 2007 - 01:29:25 CEST