What makes Lisp difficult to read?

https://paultm.nl/paren-thesis

Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49879343

#HackerNews #Lisp #Difficulty #Readability #CodeChallenges #Programming #Language

when i was in high school, graphing calculators were the hot new thing in mathematics. we weren't required to own one, but our math teacher sent a letter home recommending them to parents

there were a few different brands and models out there, and with that, came an implicit pecking order:

the TI-8x calculators were unquestionably great. I spent months grinding my parents into buying a jet black TI-85 (of which i paid half), so i could have the extra memory, link port, TI-BASIC, and a lowercase alphabet bitfont. us ti-85 owners fancied ourselves the tremere clan of the kindred. i learned how to program on it for the next year, instead of learning polynomials

the less discerning kids ended up with the TI-81 - no link port, scant RAM, and no lowercase font. clanless thin-bloods!

at the absolute bottom of the slush pile were the Casio kids. while the FX-7700x machines had a kickass interface and built-in solvers, the teacher had no idea how to use them, and the casio kids were relegated to nosferatu status

one day, out of nowhere, two kids showed up with Hewlett Packard 48G calcs. the case designs were slick, had fonts of different sizes, used crazy reverse polish notation, and did infrared calc-to-calc file transfers. they were incredibly powerful and fast. i was instantly jealous.

but they were also incredibly expensive - $250+ at the time. i gritted my teeth and lived with my inferior TI-85 for the rest of my high school years.

today i found out that the HP 48G calculators had their own stack-based programming language based on LISP called RPL, and could even assemble native ASM code (with a miniassembler installed) written in-calculator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_48_series#Programming

you don't need to tell me twice. i just ordered a cheap broken 48G that, hopefully, i'll be able to repair and turn into goofy programming machine :D

#1990s #calculators #programming #lisp

Alt...

The front of an HP 48G graphing calculator. The LCD screen is off, and there are a few dozen buttons below. It has a charcoal grey soft case beside it.

Today's article
"
002BEGINNINGS one lisp example making lisp an infinitely lazy series language
"
is the example of lazy infinite cl-series from the show yesterday written up a bit.
https://medium.com/@screwlisp/002beginnings-one-lisp-example-making-lisp-an-infinitely-lazy-series-language-c564cec8216d
#programming #lisp #commonLisp #infinity #clSeries #medium

#vintage #programming #c

This adds a static bitmap background.
critically, I finally got my 20 year old code together and it now properly generates a mask that's 1 pixel thicker than the sprite itself. And all that, working with multiple animation frames. All bundled in an E-Z to use function.

I have been keeping an eye on this multi-paradigm, research #programming language called #Mozart (formerly Oz). It was created by Prof. Gert Smolka in 1991.

Mozart traces its roots to Lisp, Prolog, and Erlang. It supports PP, OO, FP (eager by default, lazy by choice), and LP (constraint-based) paradigms, all in a clean, unified, modern syntax. It has built-in message-passing concurrency and full GUI.

When using Mozart, it is important note that its raison d'être is academic language research, not industrial software development.

http://mozart2.org/

Gamer+ Events

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry on Gamer+, Saturday night at 10:00 CDT, while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day, tob's Dubious Goals Committee is at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT.

Enjoy The Lispy, Gopher, Climate Show at zero hundred hours UTC each Wednesday. A programming show with a focus on lisp and climate change.

Links in part 2

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

*boost for reach*

Do you pirate media?

#askfedi #question #piracy #netflix #streaming #movies #enshittification #sysadmin #programming

One thing that irritates me a little when I have to write a little Python script, is the commenting.

REM BASIC
{ Pascal }
/* C, Java */
// Modern C, C++, Java
;; Lisps
#| Lisps |#
# Python

One-a these things is not like the other,
one-a these things is not the same!

Everyone post BASIC has block comments, or double-tap comment char to line comment. (technically you only need ; in Lisps, but in practice ;; is used).
#programming #python

Hmm, I was gonna use C++, but should I code my low-power embedded project with micropython?

No. No, I should not.

Good lord, Python sucks.

"It's good for learning."

No, *BASIC* is good for learning, Python is good for... um... things that are slightly too complex for a shell script?

Math? No, use R or Octave.

Can anyone explain what Python is good for that something else isn't *significantly* better for? Maybe it could be good as a replacement for Javascript?

#Programming #Python

Gamer+ Events

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry on Gamer+, Saturday night at 10:00 CDT, while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day, tob's Dubious Goals Committee is at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT.

Enjoy The Lispy, Gopher, Climate Show at zero hundred hours UTC each Wednesday. A programming show with a focus on lisp and climate change.

Links in part 2

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

𝗛𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗿.𝗶𝗼:

#Courses #Programming #Hackr

https://thewhale.cc/posts/hackrio

Find the Best Programming Courses & Tutorials. Free and paid plans.

Alt...

Find the Best Programming Courses & Tutorials. Free and paid plans.

Gamer+ Events

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry on Gamer+, Saturday night at 10:00 CDT, while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day, tob's Dubious Goals Committee is at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT.

Enjoy The Lispy, Gopher, Climate Show at zero hundred hours UTC each Wednesday. A programming show with a focus on lisp and climate change.

Links in part 2

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

Every #programmer, including me, esteems the syntax more than the semantics, when semantics is actually more important than syntax in #programming.

This imbalance even appears in the modern programming language design and implementation textbooks, which cover the grammar of the syntax in nauseating details, but give short shrift to denotational semantics. And none of the currently popular modern languages come with a mathematically proven definition, relying instead on the hand wavy operational semantics baked into the compiler.

Around 2023, I wrote an article called "A Forlorn Hope of #Fortran Modernisation", in which I proposed a cleaner Agda-like syntax for Fortran, the seventy-year-strong scientific computing language, along with dependent types as a semantic crutch. (Yes I, too, pushed the semantics into the background, there.)

https://amenzwa.github.io/stem/PL/FortranModernisation/

Some forty years earlier, when Bailes published his paper "A Rational #Pascal" in 1983, I was still an EE undergrad. In that paper, Bailes proposed a less restrictive syntax for Pascal, then a ten-year-old, popular "first language" for CS undergrads, and industry-born C was still considered uncouth by the ALGOL-fed academics.

https://ro.uow.edu.au/ndownloader/files/50546136

These days, we have Go, Nim, Zig, Odin, and other system programming languages designed as "the replacement" for the {C, Pascal, ALGOL} syntax, but not the semantics.

In our field, times change, but attitudes remain forever the same.

Gamer+ Events

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry on Gamer+, Saturday night at 10:00 CDT, while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day, tob's Dubious Goals Committee is at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT.

Enjoy The Lispy, Gopher, Climate Show at zero hundred hours UTC each Wednesday. A programming show with a focus on lisp and climate change.

Links in part 2

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

𝗛𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗿.𝗶𝗼:

#Courses #Programming #Hackr

https://thewhale.cc/posts/hackrio

Find the Best Programming Courses & Tutorials. Free and paid plans.

Alt...

Find the Best Programming Courses & Tutorials. Free and paid plans.

Functional Programming: Application and Implementation by Peter Henderson, published in 1980, is a classic that presents concepts mostly in pseudocode rather than specific programming languages.

https://archive.org/details/functionalprogra0000hend

#FunctionalProgramming #programming #book #retrocomputing

Hey kids! It's the start of the Fall semester, and I'm again teaching "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment".

The syllabus and all course materials including all code examples are available here:
https://stevens.netmeister.org/631/

As usual, we'll be using #NetBSD as our main platform. All video lectures are public and available for free on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0qfF8MrJ-jxMfirAdxDs9zIiBg2Wug0z

I'll be posting individual lecture videos and related links in this thread throughout the semester.

#programming #unix #apue

#lispyGopherClimate Tuesday-night-in-the-Americas (0UTC Wednesday) every week since 2022 #lisp #lambdaMOO #technology #podcast feat. The #Gopher .

https://toobnix.org/w/d2ng3NPJzpEsGUSvqNHDKK

#climateCrisis #haiku by ANSI #commonLisp's @kentpitman whom is joining us again this week!

+ @jhlagado } I am hoping these two will talk about their overlapping ( #zork / #adventure(6) #gamedev ) and parallel contemporaneous computing histories. ( #lisp / #basic #programming )

And @ramin_hal9001 !

https://lambda.moo.mud.org

Alt...

LISPY GOPHER SHOW unix_surrealism show banner ; Two demons help the gopher and lisp alien carry radio equipment through flooded wreckage.

What are the right metrics when working with AI?

Check out #ACMBytecast's full interview with Nicole Forsgren: https://learning.acm.org/bytecast/ep81-nicole-forsgren

#programming #developer #AIAgent #Agentic

Gamer+ Events

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry on Gamer+, Saturday night at 10:00 CDT, while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day, tob's Dubious Goals Committee is at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT.

Enjoy The Lispy, Gopher, Climate Show at zero hundred hours UTC each Wednesday. A programming show with a focus on lisp and climate change.

Links in part 2

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

On my blog: Developer Diary, Esmet-Akhom Graffito https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2026/08/24/esmet-akhom.html
This week's projects include a Wikipedia update, my mini-server, a recipe, my Scrawls editor, the blog's code, and some library updates.
#programming #project #devJournal

Gamer+ Events

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry on Gamer+, Saturday night at 10:00 CDT, while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day, tob's Dubious Goals Committee is at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT.

Enjoy The Lispy, Gopher, Climate Show at zero hundred hours UTC each Wednesday. A programming show with a focus on lisp and climate change.

Links in part 2

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

Those who grew up using FORTRAN, LISP, C, Pascal, Smalltalk, ML, and their contemporaneous classics, and are still making meaningful use of their modern incarnations should consider themselves extremely fortunate for having lived through the Golden Age of #Programming when it was still an intellectual pursuit—a mathematical activity—as well as for having witnessed how those great designs evolved, decade upon decade, and stayed firmly relevant.

I love the efficiency with which ImageMagick  has been created. The look of the user interface is deliberately simple; the software suite needs to be as blazingly fast as possible from the shell

@rl_dane

#imagemagick #Image #Magic ✨ #OpenSource #programming #compression #Graphics

May I assume that you used this wonderful software suite in your endeavor?

https://imagemagick.org/#gsc.tab=0

@rl_dane

#Image #Magic ✨ #OpenSource #programming #compression #Graphics

Great programmers do not pick #favourites amongst the #programming languages; they strive to be proficient in every language at hand.

————

Right so, these are my favourite languages:

• 6502 assembly '75
• C K&R '78
• Smalltalk '80
• Scheme R⁴RS '91
• Standard ML '97

Thug life of an ordinary programmer....😒

Any #CommonLisp folks know of long form resources for learning how to do repl based development? I saw an article that said they used live debugging of a running system on a space mission which has got me intrigued. #lisp #programming

To people in the #lisp #emacs #programming space, I'm currently trying to get into learning Lisp as a programming language (as a hobby). My work mainly involves knowing python but like many people in physics, writing good code is never quite taught to us.

I would like to learn Lisp primarily out of interest but also it would benefit me iif the structure of Lisp itself would teach me good programming practices that I could use when writing python.

Keeping this in mind, are there any Lisp dialect recommendations? I've heard good things about Common lisp and Clojure, but would be interested if those (or any other dialect) would serve my purpose.

#CommonLisp #Scheme #Clojure #Lisp #coding

Gamer+ Events

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry on Gamer+, Saturday night at 10:00 CDT, while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day, tob's Dubious Goals Committee is at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT.

Enjoy The Lispy, Gopher, Climate Show at zero hundred hours UTC each Wednesday. A
programming show with a focus on lisp and climate change.

Links in part 2

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

When I first got to know the #Z notation #formal method in the early 1980s, I was very impressed. In those days, imperative languages like C and Pascal ruled the industrial landscape, and pen-and-paper #programming was still an accepted, nay expected, practice. The Z notation and its emphasis on proof obligations fit well with that paper-borne process of specification and design.

Not long after, I got to know #ML and its Hindley-Milner type system. Thereafter, I was no longer impressed with Z's use of an overtly ceremonial and verbose syntax to describe what I could write just one expression in ML.

This superiority of #FP syntax over Z's bloated notation is even more evident in modern descendants of ML, such as Standard ML, OCaml, Haskell, Agda, Idris, Coq, and Lean.

Var Zero on how naming things and focusing on the intent of code helps uncover problematic design and abstraction issues.

What I mean is simpler: be mindful of the intent of the code.

https://var0.xyz/posts/mindful-coding-purpose-and-intention.html

#programming #SoftwareDesign

yesterday's mail included vol 4 of Dr Dobb's Journal - a kind of legendary programming and hardware guide of the 70s and 80s that I sadly was too young to find in the flesh as a kid

it took a few years to find this volume, and i'm elated that it is just as witty, fascinating and joyful as its reputation implies. each volume is a collection of previous issues of the journal - this one includes issues 31-40, all from 1979. it's heavy with zilog Z80 related programming, since that was the most popular (and cheap) consumer-hacker cpu in that period, as well as stuff for CP/M and the motorola 6800, MOS 6502, and Pascal.

to be honest, i'm not used to reading such helpful and insightful tips from other computer enthusiasts. there are no replyguys here - just fellow nerds excited about a new technique they want to share with others. this seems like an important lesson for now more than ever.

there are no religious wars over the One True Language or sniping over brands. just a bunch of folks just glad to find out that others are as excited as they are about generating prime numbers and Tiny BASIC.

the editor's preface does such a great job of relating the friendly tone of the journal that i've included it here.

(besides - Running Light with No Overbyte has only become more important in light of recent computing history.)

#retrocomputing #programming

Alt...

The front page of Dr Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia: Running Light Without Overbyte. A reference journal for Users of home computers, volume four, by the people's computer company.

Alt...

Editor's Preface: And where will it lead? That was the question posed in Dr. Dobb's Journal, Volume Ill. It was a time when a body of microprocessor knowledge had been accumulated, but the number of persons with access to and understanding of that knowledge was extremely small. Manufacturing techniques were being perfected, but costs were still high. The bandwagon was rolling, but no one was holding the reins. At least, that's the way it appeared. Dr. Dobb's Journal was born in a time of chaos. Some fantastic new machines had been bred in basement test tubes. The problem was how to optimize their potential? Then a handful of radical-thinking idealists produced Tiny BASIC and a publication in which to communicate the good news. More good things have been cropping up since then, and now the magazine serves as a broad forum for the micro community. To answer the original question, the revolution in microcomputing will lead where- ever we direct it. In the beginning, when there was very little momentum to the personal computing movement, a handful of movers and shakers could do most of the guiding. They saw to it that the power of small computers would indeed rest in the hands of indi- viduals instead of with corporations or government. The movement has, of course, gained gigantic proportions as more and more people have begun to grasp its significance and to reap its benefits. With its present inertial force, many more guiding hands are needed to keep it on track, to preserve the original dream. Dr. Dobb's Journal has kept pace by opening its pages to new authors, more free thinkers and quiding lights. The proliferation of hardware and software has required that we grow to meet the challenge presented by our own idealism. In order to keep alive the concept of personal computing power, we must not only keep stride with technology, we must shape the fu- ture. We must be in the forefront, developing systems tools and refining the programming languages, tecnniques and very concepts which will influence what small computers will be able to do, and for whom. Lest we become too grandiose, too filled with the importance of our mission, we have Doc Dobb's humbling influence. Always ready with a bit of irony and keen wit, Doc sees to it that the pages of his journal remain open as a forum and that they do not become a soapbox dominated by any particular group or prejudice. His philosophical outlook is often expressed in such homilies as "Let a thousand lilies bloom . it's grist for the mill, we'll grind it." That view is tempered by another of Doc's sayings, "The quick brown fox keeps his tail out of the lazy dog's mouth." That is Doc's way of reminding us not to be influenced by any special interests. Its broad, objective approach has enabled Dr. Dobb's Journal to serve the world as the lead- ing publication in its field. But more than a publication, it is a style of thinking which makes technology work for humans - and not the other way around. Marlin Ouverson Editor

Alt...

A letter to the journal: CONSERVING MEMORY WITH THE HUFFMAN CODE Dear Dr. Dobb's: If you really want to conserve memory . .. here are some ideas borrowed from Information Theory to allow English language text to be stored very efficiently. It is an alternative to the word-storage schemes proposed by Klaus Holtz in DDI #33 and by Gordon Wilk in his DDJ #36 letter. It's called a Huttman code. Til describe the encoding method on a small. hvpothetical alphabet rather than work with the entire ASCII set. Suppose we wanted to store some text in the FERPOE language, which uses only the letters A, B, C, D, and E. We know that standard FERPOE contains the following distribu- tion of letter frequencies: Letter Probability A .37 B .25 C .20 D .11 E .07 Instead of devoting eight or even three bits to each of these characters in our computer encoding, it 1s more eltiCient to use fewer bits on the more trequent characters (e.g., A) Morse code does this. But how do you decide how many bits to use for each character? There's a simple algorithm which finds the best combination: You write down the probablities in a roW, and grow Tree by performing the following iteration until there 1s only one number in vour current row. Iteration: copy the previous IOW, onv remove the two smallest numbers rom the roW, and write their sum in their place. For our FERPOE example, the tree looks like this:

I'm done using AI – Brett Codes

https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/

> Why I'm stopping using AI for coding (and anything else) after using it earnestly for a year and coming to understand the harms it causes on personal, societal, and environmental levels.

#technology #programming #webdev #gamedev

Gamer+ Events

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry on Gamer+, Saturday night at 10:00 CDT, while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day, tob's Dubious Goals Committee is at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT.

Enjoy The Lispy, Gopher, Climate Show at zero hundred hours UTC each Wednesday. A
programming show with a focus on lisp and climate change.

Links in part 2

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

New #blog #post: My Failed Tech Predictions

https://rldane.space/my-failed-tech-predictions.html

1637 words

cc: my wonderful #chorus: @joel @dm @sotolf @thedoctor @pixx @orbitalmartian @adamsdesk @krafter @roguefoam @clayton @giantspacesquid @Twizzay @stfn

(I will happily add/remove you from the chorus upon request! :)

#rlDaneWriting #blost #computing #phones #smartphones #enpoopification #retrocomputing #programming #slop #MacOS #Macintosh #data #InformationAge #SCSI #Mobile #TuringTest #LLM #LLMs #ChatBots

There are many cases of end users who are totally ignorant in LLM use cases

I've been able to educate one with success

When she realized that before her one query

• many megawatts were used to create the training regimen of the model
• Peta Bytes of copyrighted information was blatantly stolen without regard to ownership
• in turn sold for profit to companies
• while getting end users addicted to using them

...She realized what Destruction she was causing, on a Global Scale because she knows personally what Global Warming does in her Area of the Country were flooding regularly occurs due to Climate Shifts

@rl_dane

#LLM #slop #hallucinations #AI #programming #coding #weather #climate #change

Gamer+ Events

part 1

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry every Saturday night at 10:00 CDT. Join the open music chat on Gamer+ while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day it's tob's Dubious Goals Committee at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows on Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows on Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT.

Listen at anonradio.net. Join sdf.org for free to join the DJ chat.

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

Programming used to be a mathematical act. But that has not been so for some decades, not since release cycles shrank from once every two years down to inhumanely short intervals. It now appears that mathematics, and indeed creativity, has no place in modern high-frequency CI/CD CRUD-grinding.

But even in this #AI Slop Age, life-critical #engineering work still demands #mathematical reasoning and #professional guarantees, under law. Software now plays a central role in this type of work. And software frailties have reached epidemic levels, from operating system kernels, device drivers, and up. Hence, #verified #programming has become an urgent necessity.

By “verified”, I mean not post hoc but ab initio verification, at every stage of the process: requirements analysis, specifications as propositions, computer assisted proofs, design synthesis, deterministic code transformation.

Many #IT software practitioners maintain that they neither know nor care about mathematics, and that they cannot afford mathematical frolics when there are profits to be reaped.

That economic argument is, at best, weak, in the modern, tightly integrated society, where the full cost of software failures is incalculable. Even amongst ordinary, but essential, business applications that cannot harm life and limb, a propagating cascade failure now has the potential to collapse the global economy, in an instant.

Be that as it may, such economic objections have no force at all against the legally mandated safety requirements of life-critical applications.

Teaching Kids Forth https://gracefulliberty.com/articles/teaching-kids-forth/

#forth #forthlang #programming

Tolkien‘s linguistic inventions are startlingly creative. In ordinary story telling, invented languages rarely appear, and if they do, they are just superficial props. But each of Tolkien‘s languages is complete—dare I say, “Turing complete”—equipped with its own origin story, evolutionary history, regional dialects, cultural functions, fully formed script, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, idioms.

#Tolkien’s originality, ingenuity, thoroughness, industry, and process could serve as inspirations in designing new #programming languages. We still stand to gain much, even if we #IT practitioners do no more than to look upon Tolkien’s life work as mere aspirations.

Modern computing began when models of computability were invented in the mid 1930s, by mathematicians, like Turing, Church, Kleene, et al. Within a decade, first commercial computers, designed by engineers from top academic institutions, were being sold. Within two decades, high-level programming languages FORTRAN, LISP, COBOL, and ALGOL emerged, also created by academics.

Today, though, the majority of software systems are now being cobbled together by those who know nothing of, and care even less of, the foundational #mathematics of computing—using #AI, but of course. Somewhere along the way, modern #software practices diverged from traditional #engineering practice.

That bifurcation point was when the once-united "computing team" splintered into architect (EE), algorithmist (CS), programmer (CS), coder (IT), operator (IT), etc. It was also at this point in time when the first commercial computers and early high-level #programming languages emerged.

Gamer+ Events

part 1

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry every Saturday night at 10:00 CDT. Join the open music chat on Gamer+ while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day it's tob's Dubious Goals Committee at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows on Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows on Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT.

Listen at anonradio.net. Join sdf.org for free to join the DJ chat.

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

ohhh this is just fascinating. it turns out that A Fool's Errand (a very eclectic tarot-themed puzzle game for the mac) by cliff johnson got a sequel 25 years later, called A Fool and His Money.

the sequel was built in Adobe (Macromedia) Director (!) of all things, and required a serial number/key file after 90 days, which you could only buy by emailing cliff and receiving a zipped keyfile

cliff stopped selling the game a few years later, and it completely disappeared.

out of pure frustration, Renzo Pigliacampo decompiled the compiled Director projector, and reassembled a working Director project out of it.

he does a great job of explaining the process of writing a keygen for a 10+ year old game here. it warms my heart to see Lingo code again after decades 😻

https://renzopigliacampo.medium.com/the-fool-and-his-money-making-a-keygen-for-a-commercial-shockwave-game-eb6daf135b8b

#programming #macromedia #macintosh

Alt...

A screenshot from the game A Fool and his Money. It shows a priest or knight of some kind atop a medieval horse. A castle is in the background, along with a medieval style sun. It is painted in a rainbow of colours.

Someone’s favourite #programming language can be likened to a knife. It could be a well made, but common, Swiss Army knife, or it could be a well made, and pricey, high carbon steel santoku hand forged by the last remaining blade master in Seki, Gifu Prefecture, whose ironworks date back centuries.

A knife user would not think of using his favourite knife, whichever type, to clean the toilet, to dig a trench, or to perform some other task for which the knife was not designed. And although he would use his favourite santoku in the kitchen daily, he would only pocket his SAK on a camping trip. The SAK is as generally applicable as a knife can be, but even this estimable knife has its limits.

Likewise, a programmer should select a #programming language that best fits a particular task. There is no such thing as the definitive GPL for all occasions. Every GPL is designed for a particular purpose with a particular axe to grind. A GPL is but a Turing-complete DSL in disguise.

It, therefore, behoves the programmer to learn, over the course of his career, as many languages from as many paradigms as practicable.

The ML family of #FP #programming languages—both eager (ML, SML, Caml, OCaml, F#, Reason, Idris, …) and lazy (Hope, Miranda, Haskell, Agda, …) varieties—are arguably the most ergonomic to use for offline system programming and for compiler implementation. SML and Haskell dominate amongst the #CS academic research language implementations, and OCaml amongst the #IT industrial strength language implementations.

Also, nearly every language that has become popular in IT since the early 2000s (Scala, Rust, Swift, Kotlin, Python 3, Mojo, Elm, Grain, Moonbit, …) has wholesale adopted ML’s type system and language constructs. Yet, the ML family remains unknown in the industry, and its direct influence upon all modern languages gone unacknowledged. Even OCaml and Haskell, despite their industry-wide notoriety, had somehow escaped broad adoption.

This situation is unfortunate, because the ML family of languages all have the unique ability to transform an average user into an effective theoretical thinker and an efficient practical doer.

pfft trying to figure out how to keep my skills sharp in these days where I'm mostly paid to boil the oceans managing a fleet of clanks, considering various languages I'd work in if I got to choose, circling around the idea of a project, wondering: is there a DICOM library for Haskell? Yes there is, and I'm a maintainer. https://hackage.haskell.org/package/dicom (for what it's worth, it's not nearly mature enough to be useful) #programming #haskell

You are a computer scientist working in interpretable machine learning. How did you end up working with the police to solve crimes?

Find out in #ACMBytecast episode 86, where host Rashmi Mohan interviews 2025 #ACMFellow Cynthia Rudin, a professor at Duke University.

#machinelearning #programming #innovation #tech

The hardest thing in Dylan or any 🫰quote "normal" unquote🫰lang, is writing algebraic math when you're used to RPN or sexpr. Why am I putting one argument before the operator, the other randomly after, and having to figure out which ones happen first? Do people DO MATH like this‽

In theory I could just use +(a, b) (or does it need \+(a, b)? I'd try that in REPL but there isn't one).

#DylanLang #lisp #scheme #programming #math

Helix is a free, open-source code editor written in Rust with Vim-style modal editing, built-in LSP support, Tree-sitter syntax highlighting, and multiple cursors, no complex plugin setup required.

A fast, privacy-friendly editor for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

More details: https://digitalescapetools.com/tools/tool.html?id=helix

#OpenSource #Programming #Rust #CodeEditor #Linux #Privacy

Alt...

Screenshot of the Helix project page showing the Helix logo, release and build badges, contributor count, and an editor preview demonstrating split-pane code editing with documentation popups.

#lispyGopherClimate #archive #peertube #tech #podcast #lisp since 2022 it is Sunday morning in Europe.

https://toobnix.org/w/btRXHfYjMbGQjLZp72j2nP

My personal attempt at #orgmode babel #dev #programming #lisp #emacs .

Gamer+ Events

part 1

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry every Saturday night at 10:00 CDT. Join the open music chat on Gamer+ or Fluxer while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day it's tob's Dubious Goals Committee at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows on Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows on Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT. Listen at anonradio.net. Join sdf.org for free to join the DJ chat.

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

A quotation from Douglas Adams

I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humorist, screenwriter
Last Chance to See, ch. 2 (1990) [with Mark Carwardine]

More about this quote: wist.info/adams-douglas/5406/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #lastchancetosee #automation #computers #convenience #efficiency #investment #productivity #programming #return #roi #time #utility

What would a good replacement for the C language look like?

Assuming that for whatever reason Rust ain't it

#PLDev #programming

Fabrice Bellard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHJgQVmIajY
#programming #pi #ffmpeg #qemu #tcc

Generally in relational database structures do you think it's better for the child to point to the parent or the parent to point to the children?

#programming #postgres #database

Of all the programming languages that I had to learn over the years, my favourite is still Pascal. Many programmers hate Pascal because it has such a rigid structure, but my Pascal code has much fewer bugs than anything I write in any other language, exactly because that rigid structure keeps me from making a lot of stupid mistakes.
#pascal #programming

Heads up for #golang Chatmail bots developers:

The Chatmail API for Go library got a new release to support the latest chatmail core 2.53.0

https://github.com/chatmail/rpc-client-go

#chatmail #deltachat #bots #dev #devs #developer #api #e2ee #privacy #security #opensource #go #programming #automation

Some of the simplest #programming languages are LISP, Forth, C, and Smalltalk. A working knowledge in any one of these languages can be acquired by an experienced programmer in a few hours. Thereafter, it takes another 10,000 hours of hands-on usage for that "experienced" programmer to master the "simple" language. This situation is analogous to a tourist learning to ask "Where is the toilet?" in a foreign language, as opposed to living in that culture and immersing in that language.

This is why it is generally counterproductive to pump out, nightly, new languages that are mere tweaks of old, established ones, or to design massive, feature-laden languages that tried to be all things to all programmers in all domains.

Every GPL is a Turing-complete DSL in disguise, and every Turing-complete DSL is a GPL in disguise.

Therefore, a more efficient (but not necessarily optimal) approach is for the language designers to create the smallest possible Turing-complete DSL for their favourite application domain by employing the latest ideas pertinent to that domain, and to resist the temptation to inflate the design with fancy, general features.

Gamer+ Events

part 1

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry every Saturday night at 10:00 CDT. Join the open music chat on Gamer+ or Fluxer while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day it's tob's Dubious Goals Committee at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows on Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows on Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT. Listen at anonradio.net. Join sdf.org for free to join the DJ chat.

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

A systems #programming language with all these characteristics does not exist, because these features are at odds with each other. But in a #dream, we must not let aspiration be bounded from above by attainability.😀

• Haskell-like syntax
• ML-like semantics
• Erlang-like resilience
• Elm-like courtesy
• Rust-like tooling
• OCaml-like compilation speed
• C-like execution speed
• Smalltalk-like simplicity
• JavaScript-like ubiquity
• Python-like popularity
• Fortran-like longevity

On the upside, we programmers have such a low standard for what constitutes a good language: if the designer manages to nail any two of those characteristics, most of us are pre-programmed to like that language.

I think programming languages have a tension between people trying to learn the language going "what the hell do these hieroglyphics mean, use keywords!" and people who know the language going "I just want to type less, let me use punctuation instead of words!"

#PLdev #programming

I would just

• fetch a microcontroller
• program it
• add a micro led display matrix
• add CR2032 batteries, or
• dedicated small lipo rechargeable
• 3D print a enclosure
• get a custom made wrist band

...slap it on my wrist,  depending on the power requirements of the microcontroller

Much more niche, totally unique no need for a factory produced Gizmo

There are countless Open Source  Projects for something like this readily available

@rl_dane

#Watch #binary #micro #controller #led #matrix #programming #OpenSource

Browser-Based Euro Office Clone

This is an experimental, local-first project designed to demonstrate client-side managed functionality without requiring any setup. By leveraging the FileSystem API, it offers a unique approach to storing files directly on your device from your browser.

Current Features:
- PWA (Progressive Web App)
- Local-first storage
- Word processor
- Spreadsheet tool
- PDF capability

Coming Soon:

- Support for more file types
- Storage synchronization
- Collaborative editing
- Encryption at rest
- P2P file-transfer

Long-Term Goals (Clones of):
- NextCloud
- WhatsApp
- Instagram
- WeTransfer

Note: This project is experimental, far from finished, and presented strictly for testing, feedback, and demo purposes (USE RESPONSIBLY!).

Check out the demo version and let me know your thoughts!

Demo: https://enkrypted.chat/?tab=file

#WebDev #JavaScript #PWA #LocalFirst #OfficeSuite #FileSystemAPI #Tech #Programming #SoftwareEngineering #WebApps #Privacy #SelfHosted #NextCloud #P2P #WebDevelopment #IndieDev #Coding #DevCommunity #TechNews #AppDevelopment #FreeSoftware #BrowserApp

@Quentin
As you said, computers just work around these blockades. Passing the #Cloudflare gate does not prove a man's hand clicked on the box.

A machine can get around Cloudflare's blockade and write a post, all automated by a script.

#shell #script #programming #security #InternetSecurity

Gamer+ Events

part 1

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry every Saturday night at 10:00 CDT. Join the open music chat on Gamer+ or Fluxer while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day it's tob's Dubious Goals Committee at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows on Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows on Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT. Listen at anonradio.net. Join sdf.org for free to join the DJ chat.

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

A bad, unsolicited advice from an old, irrelevant #programmer:

• All programmers proficient in Standard ML, OCaml, Hope, Miranda, Haskell, or another member of the ML family of FP languages—and are interested in system #programming—should pick up Rust, at some point.

• None should touch #Rust without first mastering at least one member of the ML family of languages and also C.

4.5.3. "The admonition, "Cypherpunks write code," should be taken
metaphorically. I think "to write code" means to take
unilateral effective action as an individual. That may mean
writing actual code, but it could also mean dumpster diving
at Mycrotronx and anonymously releasing the recovered
information. It could also mean creating an offshore digital
bank. Don't get too literal on us here. What is important
is that Cypherpunks take personal responsibility for
empowering themselves against threats to privacy." [Sandy
Sandfort, 1994-07-08]

https://cdn.nakamotoinstitute.org/docs/cyphernomicon.txt

Writing actual code is important.

#cypherPunk #encryption #programming

#lispyGopherClimate (very) #live #podcast since 2022 : I currently have the flu, sorry everyone! Today my topic is:

Xanadu and The Madman, #ErikSandewall's side of #TedNelson's story.

https://toobnix.org/w/grQNigh7kFaE9QEjWDgthF

tl ; dl: the bifurcation is that where Ted Nelson picked #programming, Basic, not math and indie gamedevs, Erik Sandewall picked #lisp, math (KR) and *not programming*.

Also, the #environment and #KMP #haiku.

#lambdaMOO #liveChat as always. 0UTC Wednesdays! #RSS https://toobnix.org/feeds/videos.xml?accountId=580185

Alt...

A lispy gopher show unix_surrealism banner by analognowhere.com featuring the lisp alien's handnose reaching up to the gopher, perched atop a building with a poster having Erik Sandewall's face on it.

New instance, new #introduction time.

Formerly intrepidhero@vmst.io.

I post a lot of #hiking, #mountaineering, and #caturday pictures, #cooking, #gardening, #diy projects, esoteric #programming and grumpy #tech and #design thoughts, and #poetry, both my own and attributed. I like #scifi and #fantasy and when I post about politics it will get a CW.

Posts are meant to be ephemeral. Anything I want to keep up long term will end up on my website.

☮️

So far for June's carnival, I got only ... @rl_dane 😔

Any #vim #neovim user that would like to write about it?

#opensource #linux #CLI #Shell #editors #mastodon #fediverse #bsd #programming #terminal

I've seen where Torvalds said that he considers them as just another tool in the Arsenal, he doesn't really care, if the code is good.

He doesn't want his time to be wasted  He'll scream and shout if an LLM creates that time pit

These following words an extreme version of me would say

It looks like you will have to stop using Linux. Since from your perspective anything that uses remotely an LLM is bad, you will have to stop, otherwise you will contribute to the environment being destroyed willingly and actively

In practice that is impossible. If you drive a modern car it has the Linux kernel. If you have a smart TV or more you're also using the tainted kernel. Even if you have a stick which also streams or a camera you will have a Linux kernel in many cases.

These LLMs are an infection of the planet's  code base

Since you're already using BSD a solution would be to cut using Linux on your computers drastically

@rl_dane @FranklinFrank

#LLM #slop #hallucinations #AI #programming #coding

These are some of the great textbooks to teach #UNIX #OS to #CS undies:

• V6, Lions
• SVR2, Bach
• MINIX3, Tanenbaum
• Xinu, Comer
• xv6 (V6 clone), Cox

But there is a space to create an even smaller, sleeker, simpler, study OS:

• Barebones 32-bit OS that runs on a cheap Cortex-M3 board (STM32 Blue Pill) or RISC-V board (ESP32-C6)
• Keep the code under 10k lines of C (or Ada, Rust, Zig, ...)
• Support only UNIX-like soft-realtime scheduling (no RTOS)
• Support user and kernel modes
• Multiplex the single-core CPU to multiple processes
• Map a handful of interrupts to signals
• Provide a subset of the POSIX API, just enough to run a simple I/O executable (button pushy/LED blinky) in multiple processes, simultaneously
• Single-user (root only) operation
• No security, accounting, etc.
• Shell on a terminal emulator, via a USB-TTL adapter

The goal is to create a smallest, simplest, bona fide OS for the cheapest ($0.99) hardware, so as to steer kids away from Scratch, MicroPython, Processing, and similar other harmful influences, during the early phase of their system #programming education.

To make explicit the implicit premise above, the marvellous Arduino teaches the kids to do the easy thing repeatedly, but a comparative-joke C64 forces the kids to do the right thing persistently.

It is infeasible to teach, in detail, the essentials of an OS (scheduling algorithms, process management, memory management, memory protection, authentication, authorisation, encryption, disc I/O, network I/O, graphics I/O, ...) in just one semester.

In contrast, the kids could master the above mentioned focused curriculum in just one semester, thereby gaining much confidence in system #programming.

Point me please, to projects which are heavily dependent on LLM code generation which are older than 10 years.

The Linux distributions I use,  have no code which is 100% LLM generated

@rl_dane @FranklinFrank

#LLM #slop #hallucinations #AI #programming #coding

My take on LLMs in programming: https://gracefulliberty.com/articles/pragmatic-llms/

"I don't vibecode. I don't use LLMs willingly. Every line of code I write is my own or generated deterministically through a process I fully understand. Considering the world is divided over LLMs these days, I wanted to share my particular perspective on why I chose the path I have, as well as some of the places I do think LLMs are appropriate."

#programming #llms #vibecoding

Gamer+ Events

part 1

Chat with DJ Hairy Larry every Saturday night at 10:00 CDT. Join the open music chat on Gamer+ or Fluxer while we listen to Something Blue.

Every day it's tob's Dubious Goals Committee at 2:30 PM CDT. Something Blue follows on Fridays at 3:00 PM CDT. MixRemix Creative Commons Jazz follows on Mondays at 3:00 PM CDT. Listen at anonradio.net. Join sdf.org for free to join the DJ chat.

#events #Gamer+ #music #programming #gaming #ttrpgs

React-like syntax with WebComponents.

​After spending some time with Lit, I really appreciated its lightweight footprint but wasn't a fan of the class-based components. While Vue offers a great approach, I still prefer the intuitive nature of React's syntax for debugging and deterministic rendering. This led me to a challenge: could I build a UI framework using WebComponents that completely eliminates the need for transpilation?

​I have written a breakdown of the concept, the architecture, and where I want to take it. I highly invite you to take a look, check out the code, and explore the live demo.

* How it works: https://positive-intentions.com/docs/projects/dim/dim-jsx-webcomponents
* Checkout the code: https://github.com/positive-intentions/dim
* Storybook demo: https://dim.positive-intentions.com

​Please note, while the project is open-source, this is a personal exploration rather than an attempt to launch "yet another framework." It is not production-ready and is built for my own upcoming project migrations, but I am sharing it in hopes that the methodology is educational or interesting to the community.

​I would love to hear your thoughts on this approach. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to discuss the implementation details.

​#WebDev #WebDevelopment #Frontend #FrontendDev #JavaScript #JS #TypeScript #TS #HTML #HTML5 #CSS #SoftwareEngineering #SoftwareEngineer #Coding #Programming #WebDesign #OpenSourceProject #IndieDev #SideProject #Tech #Technology #DevCommunity #Fediverse #FediverseDevs #WebStandards #CustomElements #ShadowDOM #VanillaJS #NoTranspiler #NoBuild #BuildStep #EsModules #ComponentDriven #UIUX #DesignSystems #TechExperiment #LearningInPublic #Developer #ComputerScience #OSS #Github #React #WebComponents #Lit #Vue #ReactJS #JSX #Storybook #TechArticle #TechBlog #TechWriting #WebDevArticles

Alt...

Dim

Devo smettere di fare ricerche in rete altrimenti trovo roba interessante e poi mi tocca passare le serate a casa davanti al pc 🤣

"I had the pleasure of serving as the summer instructor for 15-150, the introduction functional programming class for computer science students at Carnegie Mellon, in the Summer 2023 semester.

This course typically serves as the second or third course in the traditional computer science undergraduate sequence, a privilege which not many other universities get to enjoy, as functional programming is often considered a niche topic.

Despite this, I (and CMU) believe this to be of the utmost importance. A disciplined, type-oriented, safety-first view of programming can be of utmost benefit to burgeoning computer science scholars, and I have often heard feedback from students that it is has a transformative view on their perspective of computer science in general.

To that end, I have made my lecture materials from my iteration of the course available for free on the Internet. Please feel free to use this knowledge in any way that you see fit, and I hope that it aids you in your future endeavors."

Parliamo di programmazione funzionale e in particolare di StandardML. Magari può interessare a qualcunə...

https://brandonspark.github.io/150/

#functional_programming #functionalprogramming #standardml #ocaml #programming #dev

"Remember that there is a distinction between a programming language and a graphical user interface. Don't confuse snazzy graphics (generated using someone else's libraries and tools) with good programming."

@infostorm@a.gup.pe @hacking@a.gup.pe @c@a.gup.pe @programming@a.gup.pe @dev@a.gup.pe @quotes@a.gup.pe

#BjarneStroustrup #C #cplusplus #Hacking #Hackers #Programming #Programmers #Dev #Developers #Code #Coding #quotes #quotations