7thaccount

It's been discussed before, but Python just seemed more straightforward to a lot of people. It had a built-in object oriented model as well when that was the rage instead of the weak default one and dozen modules on CPAN to do object oriented programming. There was generally one way to do something and that was easier to learn than TIMTOWTDI.

He himself said he didn't think it was worth it anymore and that he very rarely codes now. I respect him enough to assume he has some other pursuit more worthy of his attention.

Forth is generally all about minimalism as I understand it, but that has nothing to do with what I wrote. I was just saying the man obviously wants to focus on something else at this stage of his life and that is perfectly okay. I think he might port to Raspberry Pi if he was a few years younger, but he pointed out that he didn't think it was worth it at this point.

It is sad to see. I understand where he is coming from though. He is 87 and doesn't think recoding a super niche' software tool is the best use of what very well may be his last few years of life. He still seems super sharp though and is a major inspiration.

My kid loves the cheap digital Casios. They're super useful to kids without a smart phone.

Absolutely LOVED the tiles UI and so did everyone I know that gave Windows phone a shot. By far the best mobile experience I've had outside of a few apps I wanted missing. I really miss the OS. I think in general though the other commenters were correct that there was already too much market share coming from iOS and Android.

My DM42 feels great. I haven't touched a 48g in ages though, so can't compare.

Swiss Micros makes several reproductions of old HP calculators such as the 11c, 12c, 15c ...etc. I know the 15c has keystroke macros, but not sure about the 12c.

Edit: it looks like you're right and they're all programmable. My mistake.

Also any older folks who grew up with HP calculators and prefer RPN over the newer calculators.

There was a time when RPN was waaay better than the TI and other competition, but in my mind that time is now past us. I can use both designs well and will take a TI-89 over a Swiss Micros (mind you I own several) almost any day as it is more straightforward. That's my opinion anyway. This improvement over the DM42 is pretty cool though.

Another Swiss Micros use is for people who work in a lab with gloves and can use a calculator better than a phone.

I have a few Swiss Micros, but rarely use them. Beautiful devices though. Built to last forever.

Me? For this comment or another? I can't imagine anything I've posted is that interesting lol.

Yeah. It's a super stressful job that doesn't pay well normally and now these people are having to drive Uber on the side to pay their mortgages and put food on the table. I'm definitely not flying until this is sorted out.

F# pretty much assumes you already know C#. I found that it made it hard to get up to speed on it. I really do enjoy the the syntax though.

I haven't had an iPhone in 15 years, but have been considering going back for my next phone as mine is over 5 years old. I had no idea it had gotten this bad though. What a pile of garbage. Ads in the map app?

Gotcha. Mine is just some old blog posts and a long talk from the guy that got OCaml started. Nothing like your actual first person experience. Thanks for adding!

Do those devs actively use OCaml? I thought most of the folks writing OCaml were writing the actual trade algorithms as opposed to infrastructure folks. My post was made off what I recall their lead technologist saying.

They've spoken about this before and might not have picked OCaml if they had to make the decision again today. I think at the time it made the most sense.They can also make it work in any language as they claim to only recruit the best and brightest in the world (this may be the truth). My opinion is they could have chosen many languages and had similar results while balancing different trade-offs.

Regarding attracting talent, they've said they don't care about existing knowledge of OCaml as the language part is something they train staff on anyway. Their interviews are brutal from what I recall. I could be an OCaml expert and have no chance of making it through an interview without equal talent in high performance fintech and relevant mathematics.

What spectrum? Language practicality? Popularity?

OCaml has some high profile use at Jane Street which is a major fintech firm. Haskell is more research oriented. Both are cool, but wouldn't be my choice for most uses.

Thanks for bringing up the PE distinction. This kind of argument comes up here ad nauseum. People have different views and we argue semantics.

There is engineering as a discipline (e.g., mechanical, electrical, industrial, civil, aerospace...etc.) and engineering in a more colloquial sense like "I did some hillbilly engineering and rigged up a pea sheller". Both involve solving problems.

The former typically involves the person going through a rigorous 4-5 year program where they take a bunch of advanced math and physics classes and a ton of other classes (including coding and robotics as well as more specific classes such as power electronics) that teach logical thinking and problem solving. I'm always amazed that I can more or less talk to any engineer across the country (different state, different university, different engineering discipline) and still recognize their training and that hyper analytical mindset and feel the kinship. That of course doesn't mean that there aren't similar analytical people that went in other directions, but the training is a real thing.

A professional engineer passed their fundamentals of engineering exam, got their degree, and then took their professional engineering exam. You used to have to get 4 years of work experience before applying, but I think they got rid of that. It's an awful 8-hour exam with a pretty low pass rate. Honestly though, the PE usually just means the engineer was willing to spend 3-6 months prepping for the exam and has a need for the license to stamp papers. A lot of engineers never get it if they don't need it. I believe you need it in some cases for court cases.

As far as software engineering goes. It seems to be a discipline that matches the second colloquial definition more in a lot of cases. In some cases they have actual software engineering degrees where the student takes all the standard intro engineering courses (calculus, linear algebra, statistics, differential equations, statics, dynamics, circuits, thermodynamics) before doing the core classes distinct to that major. In that case, I'd call them an engineer due to the training and think it's an appropriate job title even if they get a job slinging corporate java, which would not typically be viewed as traditional engineering. So they're an engineer...not necessarily doing engineering. Does that really make sense? My own definition breaks down if we apply this to the same engineer becoming a garbage man. They're still an engineer by training, but they're most definitely not doing engineering anymore.

Also, if Pete gets a job slinging code out of highschool...we can say he's doing engineering in the colloquial second sense, but is he an engineer in the first sense? No.

Clear as mud? As an engineer I now must flog myself for my own internal inconsistencies. In all seriousness, language is hard and sometimes imprecise. I didn't realize my rambling got so long and apologize.

Maybe. Pull up any one of hundreds of threads. Read through hundreds of comments and you'll have one or two people respond rationally and the rest is all folks saying that the aliens are harvesting our souls or something else equally insane like remote viewing. It just seems pretty lopsided to me, but yeah...maybe they're just a lot more vocal.

If you ever want to see how they think, just check out the myriad UFO subreddits. It's pretty wild.

Everything is aliens and a government cover up to those folks....even when you prove it's a floating trash bag they think you're a fool. There are a few rational commenters, but a lot of people that want to believe so bad they fall for all these grifters selling pseudoscience books and seminars.

I got the impression it's just a new OS with a different kind of alternative to the internet. Their intent is to have their own systems programming language, UI...etc. I think the idea is to start from scratch and not just rebuild on top of the current monoliths. All of that sounds intriguing to me if they can pull it off. The AI part sounds like something they also want integrated with the OS (maybe their own LLM)? I think you're overthinking what they meant by "first principles". I think that is more about...hey...if we start with this RISC computer...can we build a new computing environment from the ground up based on some core principles like it shouldn't harvest your data and serve you ads and that we don't need a web browser...etc.

Maybe I'm wrong though, but I don't think they're interested in inventing their own universe to create an apple pie from scratch. It sounds like you're alluding to that, which I agree would be an entirely different kind of experiment haha. To further that analogy, it sounds like they may be rejecting the modern industrial/factory approach to buying a Sara Lee apple pie and showing...hey...we can just use an oven and some simple tools.

Cool. Look at both View and Draw I think. It's all incorporated as part of the main language I believe. Here is the source for a simple calculator app:

https://www.rebol.com/view/demos/calculator.r

Red has been in development for a LONG time as a modern rebol replacement. It still isn't complete like Rebol though last time I checked. The development team took a weird turn into block chain and trying to do an ICO and I'm not sure where they are anymore. The project is super ambitious and would be freaking amazing if it ever became production worthy.

Even dumb phones like that Nokia everyone had or the Motorola Razr were banned. You had to have them powered off and in your backpack.

Take a look at what Rebol did in the late 90s. They have a DSL called "View" for making user interfaces with your scripts. Rebol itself shipped with a program that came with a ton of sample applications including Tetris. The creator of Rebol (Carl Sassenrath) was also big on the Amiga scene and envisioned what he called iOS (internet operating system, not the Apple iPhone OS) where you would do stuff like load a web page by just running the page's Rebol script iirc.

It never took off for various reasons. For one, the language was a bit like lisp, but with brackets. More importantly, it was commercial and then closed source for too long when Perl was really taking off.

Long story short though, whatever language you implement should have extremely high level primitives for simple GUI widgets. Forget Qt and Windows Forms...there HAS to be an easier solution. I can see how Rebol did it and surely you can make something like that possible.

We're talking about different things than. I agree it's helpful to have an open system that the technical staff can drill into. I'm just saying at the end of the day that the key decision makers don't care. They need some simple high level metrics that can be put into some relatively simple charts and tables.

That is really cool! Making me want one even more. I might have fun picking that forth implementation apart.

Ah, so no quite "R", but "R'" (R Prime).

Haha. This is so true. I'm a bit long-winded myself and once got accused of being AI on here. I just don't communicate like Gen Alpha. I read their site and nothing jumped out as AI although it's possible they used it to streamline what they initially wrote.