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OriginalGriff wrote: How the heck did I cope with a single 17" monitor? Or gawd forbid a 15" like I did back in the days?
Come now, don't you remember coding on a 9600 Baud 25x80 green screen?
Keep Calm and Carry On
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Remember? Heck, I used to code for 9600 baud 25x80 terminals!
Lynwood Alpha[^] - that was the top-of-the-range, with a Z8000 processor @5.5Mhz - I did some work on that, but mostly it was the Beta I coded for. That looked the same externally, but had a 4MHz Z80 and 8K of DRAM.
Both were mostly coded in assembler, with later some C code getting in there.
They were anything but "dumb terminals" - one of my projects queried database on up to 6 "proper" computers, processed the results, then told one of four other computers what to do, and showed the user a precis of the result of that. (The user input a telephone number, I decided which host held the data and what OS the host would be running, got the data (in a different format for each OS), extracted the telephone line / exchange info and passed that to one of four different hardware line test computers, and showed the line test status from that. Horribly complicated, I had to run a app to strip all the comments out so it would fit onto two floppies along with the ROM image that produced ...)
Surprisingly good days - I certainly learned a lot about how to write efficient code, if not readable ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
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open the third eye.
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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That made it worse: the one in the middle normally stares at the centre monitor, and that's the one that died ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
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but, dear friend, is not that sudden apparent vacuity the very gate that opens to, as Blake said: "an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?" ... do you not see, now, that limitless monitor with its infinite quantum regress of windows reflected within windows ?
do you not hear, now, the celestial choir singing: "O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" ?
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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Test me, Cymru - test me! (11)
(Sorry it's late - monitors and all that ... )
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
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Examination
Test = Exam
Me = I
Cymru = Nation
Test = Examination
Nice clue
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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I liked it!
And you are up Monday!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
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Took a fellow Taff to solve it though
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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I dunno - a quick google for "Cymru" would tell you "Wales is a country of the UK".
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
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I've never heard the term "Taff" before, even though I've watched a lot of British TV.
A quick search enlighten me, you are either
- an Aussie company that makes bath bombs
- A sweet chewy candy
- a large river in Wales
- a German tabloid news programme
- an organisation for science fiction fandom (Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund)
// TODO: Insert something here Top ten reasons why I'm lazy
1.
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It's a slang word for a Welshman
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Turn on the PC, and ... one of my monitors has died.
Powers up, shows the LG logo, detects cable, but won't ID to windows. Checked the cable, the display card connector - it's the monitor.
So now I need to replace that, and asap ... hello Amazon, what have you got for me? Hmmm ...
At least the day has to get better from here, right?
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
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I would not count on it.
A few weeks ago I had what looked like a starting chimney fire so I had to call the fire department to care of it/check it.
A few hours later one of the thermostats om my central heating system decided to call it a day and went up in smoke with the smell of roasted electronics to go with it.
So: don't count on things getting better, they might but you never know, murphy and all that.
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As I sat in my gloom, a voice came to me saying "cheer up, things could be worse". So, I cheered up. And things got worse.
Bad things come in 3's. My grandmother from Bolton taught me that.
Don't whine, you still have a monitor.
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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theoldfool wrote: Bad things come in 3's.
I was just about to write that.
Real programmers use butterflies
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You mean you didn't have a backup monitor? Shame on you.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I had 2 x 22" (one landscape, one portrait), and an old 18" square one (it used to be Herself's) so there are backups - but I miss my landscape monitor - it's where all the "real work" got done. It was reserved for "full screen" aps: Word, Excel, VS, with Chrome on the portrait, and email / small stuff on the square one.
I've ordered a new 27" to replace it which should be here tomorrow (and hopefully canceled the 24" I did order but which post-order can't be delivered until the 18th).
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
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A tale of two functions:
int max(int x, int y) {
if(x>y)
return x;
return y;
}
and
int max(int x, int y) {
return x*(x>y)+y*(x<=y);
}
do the same thing
one is much harder to read, but also optimizable in ways the other isn't.
the CPU really likes code like the second one. Even with the extra multiplies, you can use SIMD instructions to pay for that overhead, while the code doesn't interfere with branch prediction
but coding without ifs gets weird really fast. The above is simple. Now add code to do the same thing but operate on 4 32-bit ints at a time so that it efficiently uses SIMD. Or do something more complicated than finding a max of two values and you'll see what i mean.
Smart optimizing compilers can do some of this, and much of the stdlib is already optimized with simd instructions and branch prediction in mind, but when you're trying to squeeze every last cycle out of your CPU you have to take things into your own hands.
It's not something I'd normally do, but I'm working with a codebase that's already highly optimized, to try and make it faster. So this is par for the course.
Real programmers use butterflies
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What about a ternary operator?
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That's just an abbreviated if statement.
Real programmers use butterflies
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The price of salt has lately gone up so much that today, I enjoyed my breakfast egg without salt.
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Enough to make you weep....
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Hmmm... Your second post on this subject. Do you have a quantum computer in your basement, and need to pay strict attention to the Copenhagen Interpretation?
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No, but I have steve wozinak (the only good thing about apple) in my basement. I lured him there with cookies and promise of a new NeXT
Real programmers use butterflies
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