Viewing profile — mbessey

When I get around to analyzing the p-code instruction set, the code-compression aspect will definitely get a mention. Stack-based vs register-based instruction sets are a very clea…

I haven't seen a web-based p-System, either, which was a little surprising to me. You can run either the Apple or CP/M versions through emulating the entire computer, though. That …

Yes, it's a cool hack, but doesn't really even approach the same use cases as something like p-code.

I will definitely check out SunDog, if I can find it. I haven't yet decided whether I'm making a VM for version II or version IV, or both, yet. I want to be able to run code from A…

Yes, that exactly. Part of what made Turbo Pascal so fast was that it kept your entire program, and the compiler, in memory. You had an option from the main menu to "compile" or "r…

Performance of the p-System is definitely an issue on the Apple II, especially in the "OS" interface and editor, which is all interpreted. But running applications built on it wasn…

Surely some of it is just nostalgia for a "simpler" time, but I think there is a legitimate reason to preserve and celebrate these older systems, too. It's essentially impossible f…

I did mention the Turbo Pascal connection briefly, and I'll probably make a more in-depth comparison in a later post on just the IDE. I used a fairly early version of Turbo Pascal …

I'm not sure I'm really understanding the question, but "faster at most things" is what I'm getting at. Any time you compare two different processor families, there are going to be…

You are thinking much too conservatively, in terms of performance. I think 50% faster wouldn't even be worth the effort of making the transition. If we start from the position that…

Yes, and there are dozens of spam packages registered (and deleted) every day.

Yeah, immutability was something that got kind of glossed over in that article (I'm the author). And Functional Programming was a lot less mainstream then. Maybe I should do an upd…

I really need to do an update of that article, with C++ std::thread, libDispatch, and some of the other stuff that's come along in the intervening 11 years. I still spend a lot of …

Actually, Cyrillic is an interesting case. The Unicode standard does define completely-separate codepoints for the Cyrillic letters, even for the ones that look "just like" letters…

I respectfully disagree. If Japanese ideograms and Chinese ideograms actually used different code points (i.e. no "Han unification"), then the problem wouldn't exist - the phone co…

Your browser fills in the "current password" when you try to change your password on amazon.com? How'd you manage that? I have my password saved for amazon, and I don't have to typ…

From the article, it sounded like the improvement was more around better retention of photo electrons, rather than enhanced efficiency. That would mean potentially longer useful ex…