On 2011-03-04, James Waldby wrote:
On Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:54:41 -0600, Ignoramus20691 wrote:
By the way, I bought a book for my 9 year old son to teach him
programming. It is called "Hello World!" and it uses Python.

So far, he seems to like it.

So, I need to learn Python too, any suggestions for a good Python book
for programmers. Something that would not explain in depth what is an if
statement, just would explain how to use one.

I haven't kept up with current books about Python (a long time ago
I bought a CORBA-via-Python book, which turned out not useful, and
an overly elementary Python book) and have used online refs since
to deal with particular questions. However, I've seen both of the
following books recommended in comp.lang.python : "Python Standard
Library", Fredrik Lundh, http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596000967
and "Python Cookbook, Second Edition", Martelli/Ravenscroft/Ascher,
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007973/index.html. Both are
a few years old now and I don't know if newer versions are out.

Thanks. Looks like there are good online Python tutorials, and I may
not need a book.

i

My thought is that it isn't worthwhile to get a book about Python
syntax, which can be presented well enough online. However, the
Standard Library book should be able to present background and
framework information that online man pages often lack, while
the Cookbook presents numerous segments of code for specific
purposes, which may be useful examples for learning Python.
The tables of contents of both books are available at those
O'Reilly links, so you may be able to see if one or the other
matches up with what you want.

Also the books "Dive Into Python" and "How To Think Like A
Computer Scientist" are online somewhere, and mailing list
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor may help.

On 2011-03-04, James Waldby wrote:
[...]
Perl is a good choice in many ways, far better than almost any Redmond
product, but for a non-programmer trying to get things done, Python
probably is a better choice. The language is far better organized than
most. Online documentation and support is good. Eg,
http://docs.python.org/library/ and sibling pages are nicely done.
[...]
Python has packages one can use in a program via 'import' statement;
see http://pypi.python.org/pypi. But the only really obvious
economics related stuff seems to be
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/econ/0.4.

Hi Ed,
Can I suggest that he has a look at visual basic for
applications (vba), it's built into excel and word and all the other
microsoft products. I learnt it years ago,when learning access, and I use it
often when woking with data. If Excel, Access, PowerPoint can't quite do
what you want it to, you write own code to do it and extend it a bit.

John

Ed Huntress wrote:

I know, I should ask this somewhere else, but I don't trust somewhere
else...

My son is an economics researcher for a think tank, and he uses statistics
programs -- SAS, SPSS, and SDATA -- all day long. He took it upon himself
to learn scripting for all three, an he's become pretty facile at writing
scripts in their dedicated scripting languages. Now he wants to learn
something about programming.

He has no interest in becoming a programmer, but he'd like to know
something that may be useful in his work (he had a math minor, and he's
now going for a Masters in applied mathematics). I used to dabble in C and
Assembly, so he's asked me what he should learn. I have no clue.

Unless he wants to know how computers REALLY work, avoid assembly language.
Knowing how computer work CAN be quite useful, and the knowledge can help
you avoid or at least understand really oddball problems from time to time,
but as you have programmed in it, you will already know it is NOT a quick
way to get a job done.

C is really a CRAPPY language, and has a number of syntactic "features" that
make it VERY easy to make hard-to-find mistakes. The meanings of = and ==
is a good example.

if (a==b) { do something}
is the normal conditional statement.
However :
if (a=b) {do something}
not only does the "something" based only on the value of b, it assigns the
value of b to a. In a couple dozen pages of code, I defy anyone to find
such a bug in less than a few hours. There are dozens more like this I
know about.

On the other hand, C generally produces efficient code, and is portable to
hundreds of different platforms. C++ adds a number of advanced features
that make it possible to create functions that perform operations not built
into the language, but I don't use them enough to be really comfortable with
them.

Jon

Ignoramus20691 wrote:

By the way, I bought a book for my 9 year old son to teach him
programming. It is called "Hello World!" and it uses Python.

So far, he seems to like it.

So, I need to learn Python too, any suggestions for a good Python book
for programmers. Something that would not explain in depth what is an
if statement, just would explain how to use one.

Sometime, you ought to expose him to assembly language, or even machine
language, if he is interested. I don't think most people really should
be using this anymore, but understanding what is going on down at the lowest
levels can be really helpful in understanding the limits and pitfalls
of higher level language programming.

Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.

Jon

On 2011-03-06, Jon Elson wrote:
Ignoramus20691 wrote:

By the way, I bought a book for my 9 year old son to teach him
programming. It is called "Hello World!" and it uses Python.

So far, he seems to like it.

So, I need to learn Python too, any suggestions for a good Python book
for programmers. Something that would not explain in depth what is an
if statement, just would explain how to use one.

Sometime, you ought to expose him to assembly language, or even machine
language, if he is interested. I don't think most people really should
be using this anymore, but understanding what is going on down at the lowest
levels can be really helpful in understanding the limits and pitfalls
of higher level language programming.

Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.


Assembly language does not fit my personality. I like to get things
done quickly, not messing with registers and offsets. Kind of like, I
retrofitted this Bridgeport (high level), but I would not try to make
a "homemade milling machine" (low level).

i

Jon Elson wrote:

Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.

Bootstrap loader? I had to toggle in the whole freakin' program through the
switches and pushbuttons that weren't even _debounced_!
(Scelbi 8H, 8008, mine had 256 bytes of RAM)

Cheers!
Rich

Jon Elson wrote:


Sometime, you ought to expose him to assembly language, or even machine
language, if he is interested. I don't think most people really should
be using this anymore, but understanding what is going on down at the lowest
levels can be really helpful in understanding the limits and pitfalls
of higher level language programming.


There is a really cool 6502 kit on the net.
The microKim is a tiny single board KIM computer
that is code and hardware compatible with the
ubiquitous Kim-1 from way back at the beginning
of recorded time.

Wasn't the Kim-1 (the?) first assembled microcomputer
that could be bought over the counter?



Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.

Jon


No. Thank Heavens.

Today you gotta have a USB link.

--

Richard Lamb
email me:
web site: http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb

CaveLamb wrote:

Today you gotta have a USB link.

And web address...
Sorry

http://www.brielcomputers.com/micro-KIM.html

--

Richard Lamb
email me:
web site: http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb

Ignoramus1280 wrote:
On 2011-03-06, Jon Elson wrote:
Ignoramus20691 wrote:

By the way, I bought a book for my 9 year old son to teach him
programming. It is called "Hello World!" and it uses Python.

So far, he seems to like it.

So, I need to learn Python too, any suggestions for a good Python book
for programmers. Something that would not explain in depth what is an
if statement, just would explain how to use one.
Sometime, you ought to expose him to assembly language, or even machine
language, if he is interested. I don't think most people really should
be using this anymore, but understanding what is going on down at the lowest
levels can be really helpful in understanding the limits and pitfalls
of higher level language programming.

Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.


Assembly language does not fit my personality. I like to get things
done quickly, not messing with registers and offsets. Kind of like, I
retrofitted this Bridgeport (high level), but I would not try to make
a "homemade milling machine" (low level).

i


Thing is, Iggy, once you think the way the machine works and
have routines, Assembly language can go together very quickly.

And you have complete and total control of the system.


--

Richard Lamb
email me:
web site: http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb

CaveLamb wrote:

(...)

Thing is, Iggy, once you think the way the machine works and
have routines, Assembly language can go together very quickly.

And you have complete and total control of the system.

And Assembly can be a lot of fun, too!

--Winston

"Winston" wrote in message
...
CaveLamb wrote:

(...)

Thing is, Iggy, once you think the way the machine works and
have routines, Assembly language can go together very quickly.

And you have complete and total control of the system.

And Assembly can be a lot of fun, too!

--Winston

I found assembly (8080A, Z80, and 80C85) fairly easy after learning to
program my HP RPN calculator. d8-)

On the slow old desktop computers (and especially on my RS M100 -- what was
the clock speed, 1.5 kHz??), a dab of assembly here in there made it much
easier to tolerate the interpreted BASIC that was churning away on top...

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:
"Winston" wrote in message
...
CaveLamb wrote:

(...)

Thing is, Iggy, once you think the way the machine works and
have routines, Assembly language can go together very quickly.

And you have complete and total control of the system.
And Assembly can be a lot of fun, too!

--Winston

I found assembly (8080A, Z80, and 80C85) fairly easy after learning to
program my HP RPN calculator. d8-)

Anybody with a function brain stem can learn 8080, et al.
They were meant to be easy.

The Z-80 mnemonics made more sense to me.


On the slow old desktop computers (and especially on my RS M100 -- what was
the clock speed, 1.5 kHz??), a dab of assembly here in there made it much
easier to tolerate the interpreted BASIC that was churning away on top...


There was this one Kaypro that I had ran 12 MHZ.
Interpreted BASIC was ok on that.

But compiled BASIC made the world go 'round...
Also ran Pascal, C (just ordinary C) Nevada Fortran.

But the best buzz was AZM the Z80 Macro Assembler.

They were fun days.
You could still do things . . .

March some dots across the screen and make your fortune
in the video game market.


--

Richard Lamb

"CaveLamb" wrote in message
m...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Winston" wrote in message
...
CaveLamb wrote:

(...)

Thing is, Iggy, once you think the way the machine works and
have routines, Assembly language can go together very quickly.

And you have complete and total control of the system.
And Assembly can be a lot of fun, too!

--Winston

I found assembly (8080A, Z80, and 80C85) fairly easy after learning to
program my HP RPN calculator. d8-)

Anybody with a function brain stem can learn 8080, et al.
They were meant to be easy.

The Z-80 mnemonics made more sense to me.


On the slow old desktop computers (and especially on my RS M100 -- what
was the clock speed, 1.5 kHz??), a dab of assembly here in there made it
much easier to tolerate the interpreted BASIC that was churning away on
top...

(it actually was around 2 MHz. I exaggerated for effect. d8-))



There was this one Kaypro that I had ran 12 MHZ.
Interpreted BASIC was ok on that.

But compiled BASIC made the world go 'round...
Also ran Pascal, C (just ordinary C) Nevada Fortran.

But the best buzz was AZM the Z80 Macro Assembler.

They were fun days.
You could still do things . . .

Yeah, but the fact is, in the beginning, we HAD to do things. I was writing
BASIC routines to do all sorts of arithmetic calculations. When I got
VisiCalc, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

The Apple word processors of the day would crash right in the middle of
writing an article, and you couldn't recover a damned thing.


March some dots across the screen and make your fortune
in the video game market.


--

Richard Lamb

On Sat, 05 Mar 2011 23:47:21 -0600, Jon Elson
wrote:

Ed Huntress wrote:

I know, I should ask this somewhere else, but I don't trust somewhere
else...

My son is an economics researcher for a think tank, and he uses statistics
programs -- SAS, SPSS, and SDATA -- all day long. He took it upon himself
to learn scripting for all three, an he's become pretty facile at writing
scripts in their dedicated scripting languages. Now he wants to learn
something about programming.

He has no interest in becoming a programmer, but he'd like to know
something that may be useful in his work (he had a math minor, and he's
now going for a Masters in applied mathematics). I used to dabble in C and
Assembly, so he's asked me what he should learn. I have no clue.

Unless he wants to know how computers REALLY work, avoid assembly language.
Knowing how computer work CAN be quite useful, and the knowledge can help
you avoid or at least understand really oddball problems from time to time,
but as you have programmed in it, you will already know it is NOT a quick
way to get a job done.

C is really a CRAPPY language, and has a number of syntactic "features" that
make it VERY easy to make hard-to-find mistakes. The meanings of = and ==
is a good example.

if (a==b) { do something}
is the normal conditional statement.
However :
if (a=b) {do something}
not only does the "something" based only on the value of b, it assigns the
value of b to a. In a couple dozen pages of code, I defy anyone to find
such a bug in less than a few hours. There are dozens more like this I
know about.

On the other hand, C generally produces efficient code, and is portable to
hundreds of different platforms. C++ adds a number of advanced features
that make it possible to create functions that perform operations not built
into the language, but I don't use them enough to be really comfortable with
them.

Jon

At least with C you don't crash a CNC machine. I had my first crash in
quite some time with this one yesterday:

M3
G00 Z0
GO1 Z-.5 F2.0
X16.5

I didn't catch it with the high speed run through while cutting air.


P.S. If you don't see it, caps lock was on and I hit the O insted of
the 0, right beside each other on the keyboard. So, the control stayed
in G00 mode. Try to find that in a long program.

Karl

On Sun, 06 Mar 2011 06:32:13 -0600, Karl Townsend
wrote:
snip
P.S. If you don't see it, caps lock was on and I hit the O insted of
the 0, right beside each other on the keyboard. So, the control stayed
in G00 mode. Try to find that in a long program.
snip
See
http://mcduffee-associates.us/cnc_related/COUNTCHR.ZIP
PB utiliity to count all characters in a CNC ascii text
file. Can be useful to detect non-printing characters,
lower case "L" in place of one, etc. Count generated for
ascii characters 0 through 255. Includes PowerBasic and exe
file that will run under Windows -- no dos box needed.
Includes some test cnc input files and sample output. Also
outputs .csv file for Excel analysis.


-- Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

On Mar 6, 12:47*am, Jon Elson wrote:

Unless he wants to know how computers REALLY work, avoid assembly language.

Jon

There are still a couple more layers below assembly language.
An easy step down is machine language. The next step down is
understanding instruction decode. But only worthwhile if you are
going to design computers or work on an antique that you can single
step through an instruction.

I am a little surprised no one has mentioned Forth.

I think that Knuth's books are great for understanding computer
programming at close to the lowest level. But " Software Engineering
Economics" by Barry Boehm would probably be far more worthwhile to
read if he is going to be involved with creating systems that use
computers.

Dan

Rich Grise wrote:
Jon Elson wrote:

Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.

Bootstrap loader? I had to toggle in the whole freakin' program through the
switches and pushbuttons that weren't even _debounced_!
(Scelbi 8H, 8008, mine had 256 bytes of RAM)

Cheers!
Rich



The Okuma OSP2000 control has to have the bootstrap loader programed
through the front panel. The control itself was very good for its time
and still run with almost no problems.

John

Karl Townsend wrote:
On Sat, 05 Mar 2011 23:47:21 -0600, Jon
wrote:

Ed Huntress wrote:

I know, I should ask this somewhere else, but I don't trust somewhere
else...

My son is an economics researcher for a think tank, and he uses statistics
programs -- SAS, SPSS, and SDATA -- all day long. He took it upon himself
to learn scripting for all three, an he's become pretty facile at writing
scripts in their dedicated scripting languages. Now he wants to learn
something about programming.

He has no interest in becoming a programmer, but he'd like to know
something that may be useful in his work (he had a math minor, and he's
now going for a Masters in applied mathematics). I used to dabble in C and
Assembly, so he's asked me what he should learn. I have no clue.

Unless he wants to know how computers REALLY work, avoid assembly language.
Knowing how computer work CAN be quite useful, and the knowledge can help
you avoid or at least understand really oddball problems from time to time,
but as you have programmed in it, you will already know it is NOT a quick
way to get a job done.

C is really a CRAPPY language, and has a number of syntactic "features" that
make it VERY easy to make hard-to-find mistakes. The meanings of = and ==
is a good example.

if (a==b) { do something}
is the normal conditional statement.
However :
if (a=b) {do something}
not only does the "something" based only on the value of b, it assigns the
value of b to a. In a couple dozen pages of code, I defy anyone to find
such a bug in less than a few hours. There are dozens more like this I
know about.

On the other hand, C generally produces efficient code, and is portable to
hundreds of different platforms. C++ adds a number of advanced features
that make it possible to create functions that perform operations not built
into the language, but I don't use them enough to be really comfortable with
them.

Jon

At least with C you don't crash a CNC machine. I had my first crash in
quite some time with this one yesterday:

M3
G00 Z0
GO1 Z-.5 F2.0
X16.5

I didn't catch it with the high speed run through while cutting air.


P.S. If you don't see it, caps lock was on and I hit the O insted of
the 0, right beside each other on the keyboard. So, the control stayed
in G00 mode. Try to find that in a long program.

Karl

That is a very common mistake when writing programs by hand. The one
easy way to check is with notepad and the 'find' feature searching for
O's or any other undesirable letter. Most controls that I've run will
not accept programming errors and will indicate what line the error
occurs.

John

Ed Huntress wrote:
wrote in message
...
CaveLamb wrote:

(...)

Thing is, Iggy, once you think the way the machine works and
have routines, Assembly language can go together very quickly.

And you have complete and total control of the system.

And Assembly can be a lot of fun, too!

--Winston

I found assembly (8080A, Z80, and 80C85) fairly easy after learning to
program my HP RPN calculator. d8-)

Yup. Assembly would have been a 'step down' in complexity
after that!

On the slow old desktop computers (and especially on my RS M100 -- what was
the clock speed, 1.5 kHz??), a dab of assembly here in there made it much
easier to tolerate the interpreted BASIC that was churning away on top...

I must have been on the 'bleeding edge' then.
My first computer roared along at 2.5 MHz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_820

I thought Visicalc was the cat's pajamas!

'Course I paid $5K for the setup.
Over $11K in today's funny money.

Yikes!

--Winston

Jon Elson wrote:
Ed Huntress wrote:

I know, I should ask this somewhere else, but I don't trust somewhere
else...

My son is an economics researcher for a think tank, and he uses statistics
programs -- SAS, SPSS, and SDATA -- all day long. He took it upon himself
to learn scripting for all three, an he's become pretty facile at writing
scripts in their dedicated scripting languages. Now he wants to learn
something about programming.

He has no interest in becoming a programmer, but he'd like to know
something that may be useful in his work (he had a math minor, and he's
now going for a Masters in applied mathematics). I used to dabble in C and
Assembly, so he's asked me what he should learn. I have no clue.

Unless he wants to know how computers REALLY work, avoid assembly language.
Knowing how computer work CAN be quite useful, and the knowledge can help
you avoid or at least understand really oddball problems from time to time,
but as you have programmed in it, you will already know it is NOT a quick
way to get a job done.

C is really a CRAPPY language, and has a number of syntactic "features" that
make it VERY easy to make hard-to-find mistakes. The meanings of = and ==
is a good example.

if (a==b) { do something}
is the normal conditional statement.
However :
if (a=b) {do something}

gcc will spit out a warning:
"do you mean a==b".

If you want to talk about hard to find bugs, try this one in Fortran:

subroutine x(j)
if( j .ne. 0 )
j = 3
end

call x(1)

You now have 1 == 3.
This makes even more fun, when you don't have access to subroutine X.

not only does the "something" based only on the value of b, it assigns the
value of b to a. In a couple dozen pages of code, I defy anyone to find
such a bug in less than a few hours. There are dozens more like this I
know about.

One time at a Usenix conference, we were talking about C, I made the
comment, "C is just a portable assembly language". Denis Richie said,
"I've never thought of it in that context, but yeh".

C comes from BCPL, which comes from SYMPLE, which is a portable
assembly language.

On the other hand, C generally produces efficient code, and is portable to
hundreds of different platforms. C++ adds a number of advanced features
that make it possible to create functions that perform operations not built
into the language, but I don't use them enough to be really comfortable with
them.

Jon


--
Gary A. Gorgen | "From ideas to PRODUCTS"
| Tunxis Design Inc.
| Cupertino, Ca. 95014

In article ,
Rich Grise wrote:

Jon Elson wrote:

Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.

Bootstrap loader? I had to toggle in the whole freakin' program through the
switches and pushbuttons that weren't even _debounced_!
(Scelbi 8H, 8008, mine had 256 bytes of RAM)

Wuss!

We programmed the bootloader by soldering diodes in a matrix on a
circuit board. Diode present meant a one, diode absent meant a zero.
This was the PROM of the day (SEL 32 computer, early 1970s)


Joe Gwinn

On Sat, 05 Mar 2011 23:47:21 -0600, Jon Elson wrote:
....
C is really a CRAPPY language, and has a number of syntactic "features"
that make it VERY easy to make hard-to-find mistakes. The meanings of =
and == is a good example.

if (a==b) { do something}
is the normal conditional statement.
However :
if (a=b) {do something}
not only does the "something" based only on the value of b, it assigns
the value of b to a. In a couple dozen pages of code, I defy anyone to
find such a bug in less than a few hours. There are dozens more like
this I know about.

Problems like that take mere seconds to find if one uses reasonable
compiler options. For example, command "gcc iftest.c -Wall -o iftest"
produces the following message for the program shown below.

iftest.c: In function €˜main:
iftest.c:5: warning: suggest parentheses around assignment used as truth value

#include stdio.h
int main (void) {
int a=0, b=1;
if (a=b)
printf("if %d = %d\n", a, b);
return 0;
}

Program output is the same ("if 1 = 1") with or without the -Wall
("All Warnings") option. In my experience it is reasonable to always
compile with -Wall, and work on the program until all warnings go
away. Note, -Wall doesn't actually produce all possible warnings;
for that you need switches like -ansi and -pedantic; see eg notes
at http://tombarta.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/gcc-flags/

On the other hand, C generally produces efficient code, and is portable
to hundreds of different platforms. C++ adds a number of advanced
features that make it possible to create functions that perform
operations not built into the language, but I don't use them enough to
be really comfortable with them.

--
jiw

On 3/3/2011 9:35 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
I know, I should ask this somewhere else, but I don't trust somewhere
else...

My son is an economics researcher for a think tank, and he uses statistics
programs -- SAS, SPSS, and SDATA -- all day long. He took it upon himself to
learn scripting for all three, an he's become pretty facile at writing
scripts in their dedicated scripting languages. Now he wants to learn
something about programming.

He has no interest in becoming a programmer, but he'd like to know something
that may be useful in his work (he had a math minor, and he's now going for
a Masters in applied mathematics). I used to dabble in C and Assembly, so
he's asked me what he should learn. I have no clue.

Some people he works with have recommended Python. I know nothing about it.
I suggested C, but I made the mistake to telling him it's like Latin for a
language major, and he hated Latin. He's not going to be doing anything that
relates to the Web. His interest is mostly in things that will help him deal
with data.

Any thoughts?


Any modern BASIC compiler is a good place to start.

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
Rich Grise wrote:

Jon Elson wrote:
Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.

Bootstrap loader? I had to toggle in the whole freakin' program through the
switches and pushbuttons that weren't even _debounced_!
(Scelbi 8H, 8008, mine had 256 bytes of RAM)

Wuss!

We programmed the bootloader by soldering diodes in a matrix on a
circuit board. Diode present meant a one, diode absent meant a zero.
This was the PROM of the day (SEL 32 computer, early 1970s)

You worked for SEL ? I worked for Interdata.


Joe Gwinn


--
Gary A. Gorgen | "From ideas to PRODUCTS"
| Tunxis Design Inc.
| Cupertino, Ca. 95014

On Sun, 06 Mar 2011 13:24:27 -0700, Bob La Londe
wrote:
snip
Any thoughts?


Any modern BASIC compiler is a good place to start.
snip
While not freeware, PowerBasic is the lineal descendent of
Borland's TurboBASIC, and is very robust and fast, both to
compile and run, with good developer environment. The
console compiler is ideal for data intensive operations that
dont require much operator input. This runs on Windows and
does not require a DOS box. A 32 bit application/

see http://www.powerbasic.com/ for general info and
http://www.powerbasic.com/products/clcc/ for console [text
mode] compiler info [49.00$US for v4.0,169.00$ for v5.0
printed manual available at 49$US]

http://www.powerbasic.com/products/

-- Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

In article ,
"Gary A. Gorgen" wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
Rich Grise wrote:

Jon Elson wrote:
Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.

Bootstrap loader? I had to toggle in the whole freakin' program through the
switches and pushbuttons that weren't even _debounced_!
(Scelbi 8H, 8008, mine had 256 bytes of RAM)

Wuss!

We programmed the bootloader by soldering diodes in a matrix on a
circuit board. Diode present meant a one, diode absent meant a zero.
This was the PROM of the day (SEL 32 computer, early 1970s)

You worked for SEL ? I worked for Interdata.

No, a SEL customer. I was later an Interdata (in the form of Perkin
Elmer) customer as well.

And when I started, we programmed in assembly code (~ 70,000 lines),
only later sliding over to the new thing, Fortran (~ 60,000 lines, if I
recall). There were lots of debates about the practicality of fortran
in such applications, given the inefficiency of fortran-generated code,
but the combination of the 3:1 or 4:1 reduction in coding effort of
high-order languages compared to assembly coupled with the Moores-Law
increase in computer power soon pushed assembly code to the margins. It
was cheaper to simply overpower the inefficiency.

Joe Gwinn

On 3/6/2011 4:23 PM, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In ,
"Gary A. wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In ,
Rich wrote:

Jon Elson wrote:
Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.

Bootstrap loader? I had to toggle in the whole freakin' program through the
switches and pushbuttons that weren't even _debounced_!
(Scelbi 8H, 8008, mine had 256 bytes of RAM)

Wuss!

We programmed the bootloader by soldering diodes in a matrix on a
circuit board. Diode present meant a one, diode absent meant a zero.
This was the PROM of the day (SEL 32 computer, early 1970s)

You worked for SEL ? I worked for Interdata.

No, a SEL customer. I was later an Interdata (in the form of Perkin
Elmer) customer as well.

And when I started, we programmed in assembly code (~ 70,000 lines),
only later sliding over to the new thing, Fortran (~ 60,000 lines, if I
recall). There were lots of debates about the practicality of fortran
in such applications, given the inefficiency of fortran-generated code,
but the combination of the 3:1 or 4:1 reduction in coding effort of
high-order languages compared to assembly coupled with the Moores-Law
increase in computer power soon pushed assembly code to the margins. It
was cheaper to simply overpower the inefficiency.

Joe Gwinn

I worked for EAI, another customer of SEL, and the company Bruno and
Sinnott left to form Interdata. I was present at the beginning of the
end for superminis. EAI had a rack with six 8086 processor cards and
some memory hooked into a SEL 32/97, running as a multiprocessor. We
determined that the (very cheap) rack had about one quarter of the
processing power of the big power sucking (ECL) supermini.
Analog/Hybrid computer sales didn't last long enough to take advantage
of a cheaper digital controller. Sic Transit Gloria.

Kevin Gallimore

Winston wrote:
Ed Huntress wrote:
wrote in message
...
CaveLamb wrote:

(...)

Thing is, Iggy, once you think the way the machine works and
have routines, Assembly language can go together very quickly.

And you have complete and total control of the system.

And Assembly can be a lot of fun, too!

--Winston

I found assembly (8080A, Z80, and 80C85) fairly easy after learning to
program my HP RPN calculator. d8-)

Yup. Assembly would have been a 'step down' in complexity
after that!

On the slow old desktop computers (and especially on my RS M100 --
what was
the clock speed, 1.5 kHz??), a dab of assembly here in there made it much
easier to tolerate the interpreted BASIC that was churning away on top...

I must have been on the 'bleeding edge' then.
My first computer roared along at 2.5 MHz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_820

I thought Visicalc was the cat's pajamas!


Visicalc WAS!

Still is, although there are considerably more polished spreadsheets now.

But yeah. Suddenly there was a new way to play computer!

and it really really worked!




'Course I paid $5K for the setup.
Over $11K in today's funny money.

Yikes!

--Winston


Yeah... I paid $3G for Autocad (10).
Turned out I hated Autocad.
It was about as handy as a rock for drawing.

Been working with Design CAD ever since.
For $69




--

Richard Lamb
email me:
web site: http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
Rich Grise wrote:

Jon Elson wrote:
Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.

Bootstrap loader? I had to toggle in the whole freakin' program through the
switches and pushbuttons that weren't even _debounced_!
(Scelbi 8H, 8008, mine had 256 bytes of RAM)

Wuss!

We programmed the bootloader by soldering diodes in a matrix on a
circuit board. Diode present meant a one, diode absent meant a zero.
This was the PROM of the day (SEL 32 computer, early 1970s)


Joe Gwinn


Interdata 7/32 machines we used for flight sims (way back mumble years ago).

But bias power had to be supplied - in correct sequence.


--

Richard Lamb
email me:
web site: http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

And when I started, we programmed in assembly code (~ 70,000 lines),
only later sliding over to the new thing, Fortran (~ 60,000 lines, if I
recall). There were lots of debates about the practicality of fortran
in such applications, given the inefficiency of fortran-generated code,
but the combination of the 3:1 or 4:1 reduction in coding effort of
high-order languages compared to assembly coupled with the Moores-Law
increase in computer power soon pushed assembly code to the margins. It
was cheaper to simply overpower the inefficiency.

Joe Gwinn


Seems others thought it a viable plan as well...

CaveLamb wrote:
Winston wrote:


(...)

'Course I paid $5K for the setup.
Over $11K in today's funny money.

Yikes!

--Winston


Yeah... I paid $3G for Autocad (10).
Turned out I hated Autocad.
It was about as handy as a rock for drawing.

Yup. That was the first time I uttered the
phrase "User Vicious".

Generic CADD at $99.00 was 'way more
intuitive and useful for me.

Been working with Design CAD ever since.
For $69

I went from Generic CADD to VisualCAD to
Rhino3D. I love Rhino3D.

--Winston

On Sat, 05 Mar 2011 23:51:13 -0600, Jon Elson wrote:

Ignoramus20691 wrote:

By the way, I bought a book for my 9 year old son to teach him
programming. It is called "Hello World!" and it uses Python.

So far, he seems to like it.

So, I need to learn Python too, any suggestions for a good Python book
for programmers. Something that would not explain in depth what is an
if statement, just would explain how to use one.

Sometime, you ought to expose him to assembly language, or even machine
language, if he is interested. I don't think most people really should
be using this anymore, but understanding what is going on down at the
lowest levels can be really helpful in understanding the limits and
pitfalls of higher level language programming.

Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.

Hey! I just finished writing a file called "startup.s" for a custom
board -- I'll give you _one guess_ what it's written in!

Assembly language is still alive and well, even if it lives in the dark
corners of the development efforts.

--
http://www.wescottdesign.com

And SINCE . IT . IS .. FREEWARE...

I played with FreeBasic a while back and was impressed.
It wasn't hard to get old QB45 code running.
Nor was it hard to adapt to FreeBasic default styles.

I did a little Alien Invaders hack that was kinda fun.

Lots of examples and toys available for it (FB) as well.

This, by all means, should be deemed to be the basic BASIC.


--

Richard Lamb
email me:
web site: http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb

Winston wrote:
CaveLamb wrote:
Winston wrote:


(...)

'Course I paid $5K for the setup.
Over $11K in today's funny money.

Yikes!

--Winston


Yeah... I paid $3G for Autocad (10).
Turned out I hated Autocad.
It was about as handy as a rock for drawing.

Yup. That was the first time I uttered the
phrase "User Vicious".

Generic CADD at $99.00 was 'way more
intuitive and useful for me.

Been working with Design CAD ever since.
For $69

I went from Generic CADD to VisualCAD to
Rhino3D. I love Rhino3D.

--Winston

That's 'modeling', really.

But yeah...

Computer power to the people!



--

Richard Lamb

"CaveLamb" wrote in message
m...
Winston wrote:
CaveLamb wrote:
Winston wrote:


(...)

'Course I paid $5K for the setup.
Over $11K in today's funny money.

Yikes!

--Winston


Yeah... I paid $3G for Autocad (10).
Turned out I hated Autocad.
It was about as handy as a rock for drawing.

Yup. That was the first time I uttered the
phrase "User Vicious".

Generic CADD at $99.00 was 'way more
intuitive and useful for me.

Been working with Design CAD ever since.
For $69

I went from Generic CADD to VisualCAD to
Rhino3D. I love Rhino3D.

--Winston

That's 'modeling', really.

But yeah...

Computer power to the people!

Well, I took about the same route -- Generic CADD, CADKey, (then DesignCAD,
a couple of other architectural CAD programs, and Ashlar Vellum, which was
my client), and then Rhino 3D. Rhino 3D is more than a modeller now,
although I don't know if I'd use it to produce files for CAM. Some people do
but I haven't kept up with the professional uses of it.

Anyway, yeah, computer power to the people. I could use some more computer
power myself, come to think of it...

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:
wrote in message
m...

(...)

But yeah...

Computer power to the people!

Well, I took about the same route -- Generic CADD, CADKey, (then DesignCAD,
a couple of other architectural CAD programs, and Ashlar Vellum, which was
my client), and then Rhino 3D. Rhino 3D is more than a modeller now,
although I don't know if I'd use it to produce files for CAM. Some people do
but I haven't kept up with the professional uses of it.

I use Rhino3D to produce .DXFs that I export to another package to
create Gcode for my mill. This week, I made a motor adapter
plate to help my friend resurrect his old drill press.
Half inch CRS, 8 holes drilled for 3/8-16. It Worked A Treat.

I dabbled a little with MadCAM which is a 3D CAM plugin for
Rhino. Perhaps it is much better now.

Anyway, yeah, computer power to the people. I could use some more computer
power myself, come to think of it...

Couldn't we all.

--Winston

On Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:15:55 -0600, CaveLamb
wrote:

Yeah... I paid $3G for Autocad (10).
Turned out I hated Autocad.
It was about as handy as a rock for drawing.

Been working with Design CAD ever since.
For $69

AutoCAD did indeed have a very steep learning curve. But once the
keyboard commands are learned, it is incredibly fast to use for a
competent typist. I once saw an experienced operator "build" a small
commercial building (in 3D) in about 10 minutes. He didn't use the
mouse much! His 3D model included HVAC, plumbing, wiring, doors,
windows, and a walkthru. That was with a DX486-66 with maybe 512 meg
of RAM. I think it might have been about circa R12 or R14.

I still like and use ACAD (R14) fairly regularly, but if I wasn't
facile with it I'm sure I wouldn't invest the time to learn it now.

Don Foreman wrote:

(...)

AutoCAD did indeed have a very steep learning curve. But once the
keyboard commands are learned, it is incredibly fast to use for a
competent typist.

Yup. Remembering all the command mnemonics was impossible for me.

I once saw an experienced operator "build" a small
commercial building (in 3D) in about 10 minutes. He didn't use the
mouse much! His 3D model included HVAC, plumbing, wiring, doors,
windows, and a walkthru. That was with a DX486-66 with maybe 512 meg
of RAM. I think it might have been about circa R12 or R14.

Whoa!

I still like and use ACAD (R14) fairly regularly, but if I wasn't
facile with it I'm sure I wouldn't invest the time to learn it now.

The thought makes my head hurt.

--Winston

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"Gary A. Gorgen" wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
Rich Grise wrote:

Jon Elson wrote:
Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap loader
program through the front panel switches.

Bootstrap loader? I had to toggle in the whole freakin' program through the
switches and pushbuttons that weren't even _debounced_!
(Scelbi 8H, 8008, mine had 256 bytes of RAM)
Wuss!

We programmed the bootloader by soldering diodes in a matrix on a
circuit board. Diode present meant a one, diode absent meant a zero.
This was the PROM of the day (SEL 32 computer, early 1970s)

You worked for SEL ? I worked for Interdata.

No, a SEL customer. I was later an Interdata (in the form of Perkin
Elmer) customer as well.

And when I started, we programmed in assembly code (~ 70,000 lines),
only later sliding over to the new thing, Fortran (~ 60,000 lines, if I
recall). There were lots of debates about the practicality of fortran
in such applications, given the inefficiency of fortran-generated code,
but the combination of the 3:1 or 4:1 reduction in coding effort of
high-order languages compared to assembly coupled with the Moores-Law
increase in computer power soon pushed assembly code to the margins. It
was cheaper to simply overpower the inefficiency.

Did you try Fortran V. It had some good optimising.

One of the support people was working on a benchmark, from a potential
customer, (10,000) lines of code. He compiled it, ran it.
He had the results, from other machines, all 60 secs.
The program printed k=123, time=0. He asked me, to have the
customer call him, time=0, because something wasn't right.

I mentioned this the next time I talked to them.
The reply was "REALLY????".
Some one had put in a lot of time, writing a program that did nothing.

When I looked at the generated code, it was obvious what the compiler
had done.

Joe Gwinn


--
Gary A. Gorgen | "From ideas to PRODUCTS"
| Tunxis Design Inc.
| Cupertino, Ca. 95014

axolotl wrote:
On 3/6/2011 4:23 PM, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In ,
"Gary A. wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In ,
Rich wrote:

Jon Elson wrote:
Not too many computers anymore where you can key in the bootstrap
loader
program through the front panel switches.

Bootstrap loader? I had to toggle in the whole freakin' program
through the
switches and pushbuttons that weren't even _debounced_!
(Scelbi 8H, 8008, mine had 256 bytes of RAM)

Wuss!

We programmed the bootloader by soldering diodes in a matrix on a
circuit board. Diode present meant a one, diode absent meant a zero.
This was the PROM of the day (SEL 32 computer, early 1970s)

You worked for SEL ? I worked for Interdata.

No, a SEL customer. I was later an Interdata (in the form of Perkin
Elmer) customer as well.

And when I started, we programmed in assembly code (~ 70,000 lines),
only later sliding over to the new thing, Fortran (~ 60,000 lines, if I
recall). There were lots of debates about the practicality of fortran
in such applications, given the inefficiency of fortran-generated code,
but the combination of the 3:1 or 4:1 reduction in coding effort of
high-order languages compared to assembly coupled with the Moores-Law
increase in computer power soon pushed assembly code to the margins. It
was cheaper to simply overpower the inefficiency.

Joe Gwinn

I worked for EAI, another customer of SEL, and the company Bruno and
Sinnott left to form Interdata. I was present at the beginning of the
end for superminis. EAI had a rack with six 8086 processor cards and
some memory hooked into a SEL 32/97, running as a multiprocessor. We
determined that the (very cheap) rack had about one quarter of the
processing power of the big power sucking (ECL) supermini.
Analog/Hybrid computer sales didn't last long enough to take advantage
of a cheaper digital controller. Sic Transit Gloria.

EAI was across the street from Interdata, wasn't it?

A little tidbit, most people don't know:
The original intent of Interdata, was a low cost way to teach people
to program 360s.


Kevin Gallimore


--
Gary A. Gorgen | "From ideas to PRODUCTS"
| Tunxis Design Inc.
| Cupertino, Ca. 95014