The value of a CS education

A lot of them on Youtube. :)

Hi Phil,

Ritchie, et al. It's a bit disappointing as I would have hoped for a cleaner, "ground up" design instead of "bending C" to the task. In particular, there are even more bizarre combinations of punctuation, gratuitous changes in syntax that *should* have been portable from C, etc.

Overall, though, it is an interesting language as many helpful features are included that allow you to distance yourself from some of the trivialities that you'd be forced to address in C.

E.g.,

case mom { "" =>

mom = "(unknown)"; "Elizabeth" =>

mom = "liz"; }

I.e., a C "switch" but no need for "break"s throughout and the ability to use strings as the conditions sought

It's also great for rapid prototyping -- though the GUI (tk based) isn't as glitzy as other full-fledged applications often are.

Sadly, this one doesn't look to be going anywhere...

This is insignificant when compared to, e.g., Limbo, C, etc. The problem with punctuation is that it makes it hard to read code to others (the criterion of being able to read your code to someone over the phone and them "getting it right" first time)

Much like AWK -- though syntactically different.

Yes. This because REXX defers evaluation intentionally. E.g., INTERPRET isn't practical in most other languages!

Ha! Interesting observation! Haven't considered if I would make the same *choice* though the reasoning is the significant issue. (the whole 1 vs L and 0 vs O issue...)

Yes. In my case -- wanting arb precision dec arithmetic as the basis for my math -- I was forced to embark on a lengthy campaign of building the various ftn's that we take for granted (trig, etc.).

Examples of the *translation* process that REXX is performing? OK, I will dig deeper. (my queue of "homework" is growing considerably, lately... I have 8 or 9 papers already backed up waiting to be digested :-/ )

Yes -- though, IMO, that's another aspect of reuse.

Exactly. Yet another case where having pointers proves to be invaluable.

For numerical stuff, I lust for the intuitive nature that overloaded infix operators affords C++ users. It's *really* nice to be able to say "a + b * c" instead of "add(a, mul(b, c))" when a, b and c have some atypical representation (fixed binary point, BCD, etc.). OTOH, having to write "(BCD) 4 * a * a" sort of negates that advantage. You get lulled into thinking you can "just" treat these bizarre representations AS IF conventional -- until you stumble across some mysterious bug (that you eventually trace to a deficiency in your "transparent" handling of these issues -- e.g., not supporting implicit casts to the representation in question).

I don't "do" YouTube. ;-)

Local library has lots of cartoon collections. I'll just mull through them at my leisure until something rings a bell.

Normally, I just cherry-pick the Road Runner toons.

I don't, normally but I found them searching for something else with Goggle.

Lucky you. The library system around here is aimed at retirees who like romance novels & western novels.

Those are given away. Bring your own bag...

Actually, the library in Schaumburg, IL was very good -- for a suburban library. You tend to expect more from urban library systems.

But, a library that devotes much effort to ILL can get you damn near anything you need, usually, in a week or less. (I've requested some pretty exotic things over the years so the librarians almost *expect* it, from me, now :> )

There are a lot of people who show up to check out their limit each week. I was told that they buy what most people in the area want to read. The Science Fiction section is pathetic. Sciences are lacking as well. the only other area that's well stocked is books for the construction trades.

Marion County, Florida isn't all rural. the parts that are, have million dollar plus horse ranches.

So, they've learned to spot the weirdoes? ;-)

INTERPRET is the main reason I wrote the front end script in REXX--I can construct a string and then execute it, which is a _lot_ easier than writing my own parser. Perl has a similar facility, I believe. Being able to call a whole language interpreter as a subroutine is a great luxury.

Yes, there are POEMS input files and the corresponding TEMPEST input file and EMPOST orders file, as well as the output. The examples predate my having my own FDTD engine (which is called FIDO, for FInite element time DOmain). ;)

Why do you care about doing math functions in decimal?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I am usually at (or above -- a perc that comes from having friends in low places!) my limit continuously. However, the library is just up the street (2.25 miles) and I'm either in the area or make the walk every couple/three days. So, materials get returned almost as soon as I am done with them -- and new materials checked out at the same time.

Here, you can request titles to be added to the collection. It seems like anything that is requested eventually gets added. Perhaps they figure "Well, at least *one* person wants this -- which is more than we KNOW FOR SURE about these other titles we are debating..."

The bigger problem, here, is there are many branch libraries in the system. So, you can't browse to see what's *actually* in the stacks but, rather, have to do so on-line and have them fetch the title to your local branch (unless you'd rather go pick it up elsewhere).

As to SciFi, few of the older authors are available. I gather the reason is that when a text is irreparably damaged and not readily available as a replacement, it is simply removed from the collection. Sad.

Thankfully, we have many used-book stores in town so you can find these older titles -- if you want to go hunting. Amusing, though, to be paying more for a book than the price *printed* in the cover art (e.g., $0.60)

Schaumburg wasn't rural. It was just "suburban".

No, I am just a frequent patron so most of the staff knows me by name. Even the volunteers! :>

The woman who processes the ILL requests is a friend and just rolls her eyes when she sees some of the titles that I ask them (i.e., *her*) to find for me.

Of course! In my case, though, it isn't worth much to "Joe User" writing scripts.

OK. I will see what it says/shows.

So (average)Joe User can throw together values in combinations without concern for their values, magnitudes, etc. and indicate his constraints on the result that he wants from those calculations, etc.

So, he can add 3873631.027663 to 1093.408 and *know* that the machine will give him the exact same result that he would obtain doing it by hand.

Recall, this is for a scripting language that allows users to pipe together data from various live sources. I don't want to have to answer questions like: "Why isn't this answer what it *should* be?"

I.e., as a FAQ, I can suggest: "Increase the 'digits' parameter SIGNIFICANTLY and repeat the operation. If the answer differs from its previous value, then rethink your choice of 'digits' value."