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That is a great post. I agree with you. There are often so many layers of style wrapped over real substance these days that people cannot even get to the actual substance. It really hampers deep learning.
I have gone back and read a couple of early books on OOP ("algorithms + data structures = programs[^]" and found that they talk about foundational things that modern books won't even touch upon because they waste so much time talking about stylish items.
And you're right about that page too, it has the info I need and is short and direct and valuable.
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You should try MMIX assembly then.
"My books focus on timeless truths"
--D. E. Knuth
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We were talking about "the bible" over lunch yesterday. I happened to state that The One Fundamental Flaw in the books is the use of assembly code to illustrate abstact concepts. He certainly could have defined a high level pseudocode language, as rigid in its definition as an assembly language (actually, in my first year of university study, that is exactly what the professor did - pseudocode certainly doesn't have to be loose and informal). The use of assembly narrowed down the audience to a small fraction of what it would have been with examples in a language that could be understood with minimal knowledge of hardware and machine instruction sets.
Granted, the series was started in 1968, at a time when the majority of systems programming was still done in assembler. But ALGOL60 (a predecessor of Pascal and C) had been around for eight years, object oriented Simula for a year, and Pascal was around the corner (1970). Knuth most certainly was familiar with algorithmic languages even at that time.
I'll stand by my claim that this is The Only Big Flaw of the books. Others around the table asked: The only flaw? Surely not, but MIX makes the books a curiosity, rather than the great books they were intended to be.
(I haven't compared MIX to MMIX, but MMIX certainly wouldn't have made any fundamental difference.)
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Well, I am just a low level guy...
I think they are actually great books. The audience is not wide, though.
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We are offtracking now, but nevertheless:
Looking at the Wikipedia MMIX description, at a glance it seems like "just another CPU".
If you have studied it: Could you give a few clues to the architectural details that makes this one worthy of Knuth's signature on it?
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I have just started it (the books are difficult, I have to admit).
I believe it is not the CPU to be remarkable. The algorithms are. However he did need a CPU and existing ones didn't fit very well with his (regularity) requirements. As himself says MMIX is very similar to 'modern' 64 bit RISC CPUs, but less 'fat saturated'.
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lopati: roaming wrote: o the document is a few years old, but:
- has the musical scale changed?
- how much room is that page taking up?
Agreed.
That's why I marked the message as a joke.
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I have searched for an English translation of the Danish poet Piet Hein's "grook" about jokes and seriousness, but in vain. In my rough translation - with no poetic qualities, no rhyme - it says:
He who takes a joke for being merely a joke
and seriousness as only serious,
he sure has understand both of them
rather poorly.
(If anyone knows of a proper, poetic translation, please tell me! To see other Piet Hein grooks, you may go to Grooks of Piet Hein.)
I guess that this thread has shown clearly that the joke dose have some serious sides as well.
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Well, the page loads fast, and not just because it doesn't have any ads on it.
There's a lesson here that some people need to (re-)learn.
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We just announced our 1st spot prize winner in the Summer Fun with Arduino Challenge[^] - congrats raddevus! Your CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3B+ starter kit is on its way.
And we'd love to give away more of these so we've decided to pick 1 spot prize winner every day until the contest ends. The challenge is simple and only takes about 20 mins - so grab your Arduino and get in on the action!
modified 12-Jun-18 16:26pm.
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Congrats, raddevus! Thanks for completing the challenge.
And a note for anyone who wants to give it a try: you don't even need a real Arduino! There's a separate tutorial on completing the challenge using the Arduino simulator on Tinkercad.
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Thanks so much. I really thought the extra code was a lot of fun. And I'm totally blown away by TinkerCad. It is really amazing. I hope a lot of people get to try it because it is very cool and is a great first step to trying out Arduino if they never have.
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How is this determined? Is it random? I ask because I also submitted a code like on the first day of the challenge and never heard back (no confirmation, no error, ...).
Anyway congrats!
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Hi Florian,
One winner is chosen randomly every day.
If you still have the code you entered available, could you try submitting it again? If you don't still have the code, let us know and we'll dig deeper and fix this for you.
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Hi Florian, try submitting your code one more time.
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I refuse to develop on anything smaller than a MicroVAX.
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I just saw this (June 13, evening Eastern Standard Time). Thanks so much!!! I'm very excited that I won. Having a great time with the contest.
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So glad you're enjoying yourself It's a fun contest. Will be in touch on the prize.
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I just blocked vs in the firewall (I block an and outgoing connections that don't have a rule allowing otherwise.)
I don't see the need for a lot of programs to be to be phoning home or in too many cases continuously chattering on the internet.
This internet thing is amazing! Letting people use it: worst idea ever!
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That's nice
Just curious...what does that have to do with my posting?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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if the git module cant communicate it crawls into a corner and gives up
This internet thing is amazing! Letting people use it: worst idea ever!
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I see
Screwing with the firewall seems drastic to me
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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He's only suggesting you block VS in the firewall. What you do for fun on saturday night is really none of our business...
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant Anonymous
- The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine Winston Churchill, 1944
- Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference. Mark Twain
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also make sure that any hidden git files on your solution are gone too. I know I have to do this with TFS sometimes if I don't want the solution to be managed by source control and the normal means does not work.
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