OT: Yet Another Unhappy Customer for Vista

We just opened the box a few days ago. I hope he has some fun with it. I'll help him through any rough parts, but he has gotten pretty good with self taught QBASIC, so he should have the basic thought process down. He even started making his own little library of subroutines. I'm so proud ;) LOL

Jim

Yeah, but with a MAME cabinet he will not learn anything other than how to play old video games. If he gets to learn while he plays, that's the best approach, and I'm sure what you meant. Handing a kid a PSP doesn't teach them anything about writing PSP software does it?

Jim

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I never believed what AMD and Intel told me about processors doing 2 instructions at once or that the processor really has two cores. I have to prove it to myself by writing timed assembly language routines just to be sure.

I have found it very hard to write multi threaded applications as most of my software just wont split down into parallel processes, they always seem to be sequential. About the only place i could make use of the dual processors was clearing a very large buffer, each processor cleared different halves of the buffer at the same time.

Not if he delves into the source code, and looks at the emulation schemas.

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No it is certainly not, Dimbulb. Superscalar is a processor architecture, not a system architecture.

Since you never have had a clue...

...you're always wrong. Gotta be on purpose.

I told you once before, I worked in a processor development group for close to a decade. I certainly know enough to tell you that you're full of shit. ...as always.

That's true, I actually didn't see where you said get the SOURCE CODE. That could be the ticket, I just think he would be more likely to play with something he can hook his laptop to and fart around with on a whim. I'm not sure how massive the source code is.

Jim

It might inspire them to want to learn how to write such software themselves?

Is there really much performance improvement though? For a large buffer (one that won't fit into cache), in general CPUs are much faster than the external memory interface anyway, so I'd expect that multiple CPUs doesn't improve the actual execution time.

Traditional programming languages such as C are not particularly well-suited to "parallel programming."

Sure, that's why we have so many teenagers clammering to become programmers and every computer user too. I just don't see the numbers adding up. I think having a simple platform that allows quick positive feedback is the best bet to get him hooked. After that, he would naturally want to step up in complexity.

Jim

Start with a very early version, OR don't get the windows version, get the DOS version. Then you are assured of getting ONLY a VDM with the emulator, and a command line interface.

I have been a programmer for 25 years and think the job stinks at times. Its fun to start with but once the hard work and deadlines kick in it becomes an impossible stressful task.

Microsoft dont make it easy to become a programmer. While they give away free compilers things have become far too complex. Its no longer sufficient to know C++ you have to understand XAML and .NET for the latest offerings. I waded through converting a program from Delphi to C# and I came across problem after problem trying to wade through Microsofts MSDN to find solutions to problems. No sooner had I got C# and .net 2 running that they came up with C# and .net 3, it was easier than the first task but I found loads of holes in it. Now we have ORCAS just to muddy the waters a bit more.

On top of this there is VB, C++, ASP.NET, SQL, XML, HTML etc etc

themselves?

I program in PowerBasic:

PRINT "Hello, World!" END

but the END statement is actually optional.

John

themselves?

I prefer the Borland flavor of Pascal. It takes slightly more:

begin writeln("Hello world"); end.

but it has a lot of nice stuff in it for bigger programs. I also like the checking.

For high level languages, APL is about the highest there is. Unfortunately, it needs a special keyboard. APL programs are unually memory hogs. APL is like writing in assembly for the most CISC of CISC machines.

themselves?

You aren't very "powerful" then.

Please apply one to yourself.